Behind the scene. Let's see what is happening at the studio of a wedding accessories artist!

This is a guest post by Anna of Gentle Decisions. You can see all Anna's guest posts here.

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Hello all! Today I'll tell you about my work on one of the latest orders. I made two wedding combs. It was a difficult, responsible and interesting order. It was a great experience worth sharing!

I usually start with choosing my materials. There are many kinds of polymer clay, each of them is better than others depending on a purpose of the accessories that are ordered. For example, if we are talking of a comb for a bride that she is going to wear all her wedding day long, then the comb needs to be very light in weight. 

I also need to know all the kinds of flowers and their colors and hues before I start. I would need to dye some flowers after I finish making them.

To avoid confusion I wrote a list of the flowers that I needed to make for both ordered combs. I needed to make an orchid, the daffodils and the hydrangeas for the first one and an orchid, the rose buds, the dogwood flowers, the daffodils and a few small chrysanthemums for the second comb. I took out the combs that were finished already, so it would be easier for me to copy the flowers attached to them. 

All flowers are set on a piece of wire. Each flower requires different thickness of wire depending on its size. Each pistil and stamen needs to be set on a piece of wire too. 

The orchids were going to be the center pieces of each comb. I rolled the clay by hand to make all the orchid petals. I chose not to use the cutters for that job. Then I textured the petals and set each of them on a piece of wire. 

The color of the orchids needed to be off-white. I dyed each petal in a hue that my customer requested. 

I took a few pictures to show my work in progress: 

Everything is sorted out here, so I can start putting flowers into the "bouquets": 

I sketched a few designs of the "bouquets". My customer decided to add a few more smaller flowers around the orchids. I took the "bouquets" apart to add new flowers, then put the "bouquets" together again. 

All was left after that was attaching the metal combs to the "bouquets". They turned out very light weight, so the bride would feel comfortable without even feeling them in her hair on her wedding day. 

The flower compositions were considerably longer than the combs. It just meant that they would need to be secured with a couple of hair pins. 

I hope you enjoyed my story!

Here are a few links where you can find more of my work:

Instagram

Web-site

Etsy shop

VK account (Russian)

Jewellery masterpieces. Fine jewellery by Nobuko Ishikawa

Diamond pin by Nobuko Ishikawa

Jewellery giveaway by Ginger Mint Collection

Today we have a wonderful giveaway by Ginger Mint Collection shop.

Ginger Mint Collection 

Vintage - handmade - quirky 

The Ginger Mint Collection of jewellery, buttons, Christmas decorations and more is fresh, zesty and just a little bit different.

Here are just a few samples of what you can find in the shop:

Prize: 

Willow Pattern jewellery including pendant, hanging on silver-plated chain, and Willow Pattern French Incognitos. These interchangeable earrings, hanging on .925 sterling silver ear wires and featuring two different willow pattern earring 'drops' may be the most comfortable earrings you have ever worn! Made from polymer clay, these willow pattern pieces are light, durable and lovely to wear.

Open: Worldwide

Ends: 30 / Oct / 2015

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Sweepstakes at Sweepstakes-Search.com

Giveaways

Giveaway Monkey

Monday Inspirational Quote

Monday nail design

Love this shade of red suggested by Roza for October! Classic red is not that old-fashioned, is it? :)

Wooden candy bowl. Guest post by VZBRELO

This is one more guest post by the VZBRELO girls. You can find a list of all their "behind the scene" post here.

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Hello! I am Maria and here is our third guest blog post here. Today I will show show you how we've made this candy-bowl. 

My favorite wood to work with is cedar, so I have chosen it to make a base for the bowl. Cedar is a soft wood with an incredible aroma! Often we cannot use it in our works because of it softness. However, it was perfect for the bowl project. I was very pleased that I got that cedar project! 

We started with a sketch, then calculated all the angles of the future bowl and the length of the bars  that we would need. The next step was to make the bars!

We included one bar made of pine for drama. Then glued all the bars together.

We started to work on shaping the bowl once the glue dried.

Not finished yet:

I worked on the interior first, then on the exterior of the bowl.

Almost done! Now we need to work on the edges and polish the bowl with a fine sandpaper to achieve perfect smoothness :)

Oiling is the most enjoyable step! Oiled wood changes color and aroma :)

It is done! Here is one more enjoyable step: choosing buns for the food styling! :)

Thank you for reading our story!

Maria 

Our VZBRELO community (Russian)
Insagram
Online shop (Russian)
You also can find us in other social media web-sites if you google VZBRELO

All guest posts by VZBRELO

Insagram

Facebook

Pinterest
Livemaster (Russian)

Vkontakte (Russian)

Web-site

Tatiana and Maria are the founders of the VZBRELO company that produces wood art items.

All their blog postsBehind the scene:

• Learn how to wood burn

• Creation of "The Vine" candle holder. Behind the scene. 

• DIY. Easter decorations in woodcutting technique for beginners.

• How wooden notebooks are made.

• Game of Thrones. Picture made in pyrography technique.

• Wooden candy bowl.

• How to make a hand printed card

• The process of creating a wooden leaf bowl

• Watch Tatiana hand carving a wood bowl. 

• Watch Tatiana making the Grenman mask

• Painting techniques for the wooden eggs

• Wood carving for beginners (carving wooden eggs with dreamel)

• Behind the scene. How we made the map of Middle-Earth.

Sunday Home Decoration collection

After yesterdays rain the autumn is certainly here now! I would love many of the items from this collection curated by Anna for our home! 

Find the featured shops in this collection as well as other featured shops in our growing guide of great items for the house decor here.

Bead Day

Triangular snood, French, mid-19th century. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Game of Thrones. Picture made in pyrography technique

This is one more guest post by the VZBRELO girls. You can find a list of all their "behind the scene" post here.

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Hi all, this is my second guest post here. In my first guest blog post I told you and showed our wooden sketchbooks. Today I would like to show the process of creating our the most ambitious work piece so far. Please enjoy!

I usually work on the topics that I know very well. I would not take on this project as I have not read the book or watched the show. However, my business partner Maria had done both, so we took that custom order. It was a challenge!

There are no pictures of our first step. We started with designing a layout of a map. Only Maria knows what it took to create that! After a several revisions it was finally approved by the customer, so we could start working on it!

Next step is cutting and finishing of a panel. The size of the panel is chosen by the customer, it was 40 cm by 90 cm

We slightly sanded the surface without polishing it too much. After all, it was an "old" map and it should look old and rough! We only worked on the edges. They needed to look worn out.

Each step of the work was challenging and exciting!

For example, here is the transition of the printed images onto the panel. Looks very simple! However, the size was what made the work extra challenging. It needed some brain work :) It was also scary to remove the carbon paper afterwards! What if some detail did not get transferred or something got moved during the process? Then we would have to sand the surface and try again!

We got lucky there and everything worked just fine! I was especially happy that all the fonts got transferred correctly. 

I still have my first pyrography pen. I am so used to it that I have given up trying to get any advanced pyrography tools. We made friends and I am not sure that such good friendship could happen with any other tool :) All I do is sharpen my pen sometimes, but not too often. 

First of all I drew all the big main sites: the castles, the coats of arms and the emblems. Then I moved on to the title. I am glad that after a number of revisions we have ended up with fewer names and titles. I am not really a big fan of the pyrography writing! :) 

I began to work on the continents, when all the names got in place. Here is another challenge for me: all the separate components needed to make a unified picture. It was all about the correct shading. Challenging, but exciting!

The edges needed to look rough, ragged and worn. This is a "very old map"!

Finally we varnished the finished work. Then polished it and varnished it again. Hurrah! It is almost done! We cannot believe we finished it. Now we just need to attach the hooks and we are completely done!

I promised to keep track of the time (many curious people asked me to do that after we've finished our first big work), but I did not keep my promise :) It was really hard to do, as we worked on many other smaller orders at the same time. All I can tell is that it took a lot of time and we really loved working on the panel! :)

Here is a general view and here we are looking happy with the result :)

We hope you enjoyed our story!
Tatiana

Our VZBRELO community (Russian)
Insagram
Online shop (Russian)
You also can find us in other social media web-sites if you google VZBRELO