I get a lot of questions on how I create my pieces. Do you draw them out? Do you have a plan? Where do your ideas come from?
First I get my inspiration from a lot of different places. Much of it comes from nature and the cultures I have visited. I also had a great mentor early on and her culture and artistic style has also been an inspiration. These are the things that tend to influence the style of my work. But how do I create individual pieces?
I don’t have a single process that I use, but here is one of them. This is the one I have been using this past couple of weeks on some work that have been creating. And if you are on Facebook you might have seen some of these pictures as I was posting them as I created. So here it goes… the inside workings of my studio…
Many of my one of a kind pieces incorporate a stone, and generally they are the starting point for the design. Honestly, I generally look for a stone that intrigues me at the time and then sit there and stare at it a bit. Then I start playing with some of my templates to get a feel for what I want the outside shape of the piece to be that will complement the stone I want to create from. I usually try multiple shape and adjust the direction and position of the stone a few times until I see something I like.
If I am working on multiple pieces at a time I will usually do a rough sketch of the shape and connections of each piece so I won’t forget my ideas if I get pulled away from my bench for a day or so. If I have a template that is the right size that I can use to draw on my metal I will use that, otherwise I will cut out my shape to transfer it to the metal. The shape often changes a bit from drawing to metal as I work through more of the ideas of the design.
After I have the rough shaping of the piece, then I work on the textures that I want and the style of settings I am going to use for the stones. All the pieces get created and checked and double checked that they are developing into something I like. Modifications happen all along the process as I come up with a better way, or something isn’t looking quite the way I had envisioned.
Eventually everything gets put together and the stones get set. If you look closely you can see that one of the stones is not the original accent stone. As I was working on the piece it seemed like the accent stone was taking away from the main stone in the piece too much. It was originally a faceted Anastasia Topaz, but there was just too much sparkle with it, so I substituted in a garnet cabochon instead.
The piece then goes on for final polishing and pairing with a chain before it is available to find their special person. And then it starts all over again…