Brass uniform button bracelet - a very personal custom order

Early last year Lisa set me a challenge.  She had inherited a beautiful set of brass buttons from her late father, which had come from the uniform he'd worn when he was Commissionaire at Wakefield Town Hall.  The buttons feature the crest of the City of Wakefield. 

Lisa entrusted these precious family heirlooms to me and asked me to convert the buttons into a bracelet.  We discussed what style she wanted and how it might be put together.  Then I got to work.

My first challenge was finding suitable bases onto which to fix the buttons, so they would sit flat against the wrist.  As I've mentioned before, I'm not a jeweller, so making something myself was out of the question.  Eventually I managed to source some cameo mounts in approximately the correct sizes for the buttons.  Unfortunately they were totally the wrong finish; the small bases were silver and the large ones were antique bronze.  This presented me with my next challenge.

 
Initially I tried covering the bases with gold leaf.  The first attempt was disastrous, as I was unable to get a smooth finish.  My second attempt with the gold leaf was better but still not up to scratch.  The finish was just too rough and patchy.  Fortunately, Lisa was a very patient client.  In the end I covered the bases in Liquid Leaf and the results were stunning.

I thought it would be plain sailing from here, but this project was determined to test my skills (and patience.)  Once coated in two layers of the gold and two layers of protective sealant, I realised that the small buttons no longer fitted properly inside the small bases.  I had no choice but to drill the bases out to enlarge the bezel.

Finally it was a simple process of fixing the buttons into position and linking them together.  I finished it off with a gold-plated clasp and the bracelet had finally together.

It was an enormous privilege to work on this deeply personal project of Lisa's.  Knowing how proud her father was of his Commissionare's uniform and of Wakefield's history, I was acutely aware of how precious his buttons are to Lisa and her family.  I must again thank Lisa for her faith in me and patience with how long it took me to get this piece right.

Lisa's lovely feedback was the perfect end to my year:

"I opened my box on Christmas Eve and I was blown away. I cried. You have done the most amazing job & I cannot thank you enough (...... ) everyone loves it, thank you."

Recycling at its most beautiful - bone china flower jewellery

Back in 2013 I found a beautiful, vintage bone china pansy brooch in a charity shop.  I recalled elegant ladies of my Grandmothers' generation wearing fabulously naturalistic and delicate floral brooches just like it when I was a child.  I knew I had to have it, but frankly I'm just not a brooch kind of girl.  I set about converting it into a ring and it proved really popular.  People started asking me if they could have one too.  A new Urban Magpie range was born.

My original pansy ring

Most of the famous pottery manufacturers in the Staffordshire area of the UK seem to have produced bone china flower jewellery from the 1930's to about the 1970's. The brooches, clip earrings & hatpins were all handmade and skilfully hand painted. 
I like to think that by up-cycling them into rings I'm celebrating this craftsmanship & giving their work a new lease of life.

Packing a punch

When I acquire the vintage flowers they've usually been languishing forgotten at the bottom of jewellery boxes and are often in a sorry state.  I clean them up & start the painstaking restoration process.  I file out any chips, sometimes having to completely re-sculpt individual leaves and petals with my trusty multitool.  Next I re-paint & varnish the damaged areas to blend them in with the original paintwork.  Finally they're fixed to silver plated adjustable ring bases.

Restoration work in progress

The flower rings proved popular, but my next concern was what to do with all the old, redundant clip-on flower earrings I kept acquiring. The blooms were too small to turn into rings, but it seemed a shame to let them go to waste. The solution was to recycle them into a collection of dainty floral hair slides. 

My popular hair slides

At the start of this year I felt ready to take the range a bit further and started incorporating the vintage flowers into simple pendants and statement necklaces.  The first pieces from the new collection have just gone on sale this week at my central Leeds stockist Our Handmade Collective and you can have a look at what's in store on my Facebook page.

One of the vintage flower necklaces

The rings are also available from my online Folksy shop.

Custom order - a story of white feathers and clairvoyants

I think I enjoy custom orders more than any other project, but particularly when they have a deep personal significance.

Just before Christmas, my friend Lianne commissioned me to make some necklaces as gifts for her family.  Lianne gave me some pointers about the kinds of styles or colours they might like.  The brief for her Mum's necklace, however, was a bit more specific.

A while ago Lianne's Mum visited a clairvoyant, who had told her that if she saw a white feather it signified that her late Mother was thinking of her.  The belief that white feathers are the calling card of a guardian angel goes way back into the mists of time, but is still popular today.

The necklace was to feature a white feather, so I started sketching up some designs and searching for a suitable vintage feather charm.

An initial necklace design

Appropriately enough, once I started looking for feathers they started turning up everywhere.  The difficult bit was choosing the 'right' one, as it needed to be big enough to have some impact.  Once I'd acquired a substantial & pleasingly tactile 1980's metal feather brooch, I got to work removing the clasp & coating it with glossy white enamel paint.

The feather brooch, part way through conversion

The white feather was hung from a loose plait of black seed beads and gold chains, set off with some chunkier back & white beads.  I couldn't resist painting a tiny white wing charm, to finish off the extension chain.  

"Feathers appear when angels are near"