In the middle of closing the funding for the second season of The Artist Toolbox, I started making jewelry. It hit me hard. Suddenly I was buying boxes of fresh water pearls and sorting them and then I was welding little latches for the chains and twisting wee wires to create loops for the pearls. The next thing I knew, there was a collection, so to speak. I called it “Being Plumb” and here are a few of the pieces. (I am happy to sell them. $140 for the necklaces, $160 for the bracelets and $80 for the earrings. You can use the store button above or just email what you need: petra@vaultcapital.com.)
It is fun to dress up the back a bit with a lopsided blue pearl. It has a smooth flat side that lies cooly against your back and then a small barrel vault that faces out.
Necklaces can be many lengths and each person is different but the chart above helps give me a rough idea as to where a certain chain will fall on the chest. Longer necklaces seem to need heavy more complex chains and the shorter pieces can be ultra fine whispers of metal that dangle between the clavicle with a sexy mash of pearls.
These look great on.
The gold plated ball that the pearls drop from is just large enough to cover any unsightly drooping earlobe holes. This is something I’ve been trying to figure out for years. I wore mostly posts until the idea came to me. I prefer a wee bit of dangle, but hadn’t been able to find anything in the market-place that didn’t drag down my aging ears.
The yellow pearl above has squirmy bumps and its texture contrasts with the smooth surfaces of its cousins.
I’ve been playing with rich colors such as this coppery lightly hammered pearl. That color seems to go with everything in my closet.
Here is one setting against skin.
In each piece, there are a slew of gold plated rectangles, triangles, oval loops, round loops and flat geometric forms. Some are hammered and some are smooth. Above, you can’t quite make them out, but in the close-ups below, they are apparent.
You can see how tactile the pearls are. I find myself reaching up to them and gently touching them with my fingertips. Then have such interesting shapes. The oysters delivered!
Bracelets have been the hardest for me. I started with massive messes and they really do look great on if abundance and opulence is what you are aiming for.
Then as I started to trust myself and learn more techniques for securing placement of each strand. I called these trifecta bracelets as each piece feels like the best, yet there are three of them somehow each holding the crown of crowns.
There you have it. Something I can do in the middle of the night when the city starts to quiet down and the surface of the Puget Sound stretches taunt like glass.
