Ruby Princesses

While reviewing the craft photos I have saved for future blog posts, I realized that I had skipped a project from last fall. As I've mentioned before, I designed a number of fantasy tiaras for my friend Heather to use in her fairytale photography work, which you can see on her site Fairyography. As her collection of princess dresses grows, she occasionally asks me to create new pieces to complement them.

In this instance, her client expressed that the princesses-to-be would also love it if they could deck themselves out in jewelry, as well as tiaras, to get the full princess experience. I had a pretty short time frame to create these pieces, and they needed to be small child friendly, so I decided to go with something simple.

As all my tiaras are, I made these using color-coated copper craft wire and a variety of glass beads, pearls, and Swarovski crystals.

Heather likes a magical organic look for her photo accessories, so I developed this wire branch tiara design with her input for her very first crowns, and we've used it repeatedly since.

For the coordinating necklaces, I decided to go with large, faceted glass beads and a simple bead cap. I like how these ended up looking like crown jewel-sized ruby necklaces on the little ladies who wore them.

Finally, I made bracelets using smaller faceted glass beads knotted on stretchy gold cord. I wasn't sure these were up to my (and Heather's) standards, but in the final photos they look great, and the stretchy cord is very child friendly.

You can view some examples of the photos taken using these accessories in the Fairyography blog post featuring this photo shoot.

Mythical Goddess Tiara

I made this tiara for myself as part of a Halloween costume as a Greek goddess. I bought the costume on clearance because it's head piece was missing, then whipped this one up for myself.

Artistic angled shot? Nope, just wonky photography.

I used gold colored craft wire for the branches over a brass wire base. In the past, I used brass wire for the branches of gold colored crowns, but I found it too hard to work. This tiara turned out very light, to the point that I almost forgot I was wearing it.

Backlit much?

I like these branch shapes a lot, and I could see making a few alterations to make this work for a lot of different costumes. It's simpler than my other tiara designs, so it opens up different uses for them.

Fall Tiara and Barrette

I've been taking a little hiatus from it lately, but beading has been my primary crafty outlet for several years now. I think I needed a little creative energy boost because now that I've been crocheting and doing a few other crafty things, I'm starting to think of new beading projects I want to work on.  In the meantime, I'm going to share a few of my more recent past beading projects.

I made this tiara for my friend Heather Lickliter of  Stylized Portraiture. Heather takes amazing pictures, and specializes in fairytale portraits for little girls. You can see some examples of her work (including this tiara!) at Fairyography.com.

Heather particularly wanted something with an organic look and feel for her tiaras, so I came up with this design, and I've made it in a couple of colors. For this one, I used copper craft wire in two sizes to create the base and the branches. I embellished the branches with amber glass tear drops and dark brown freshwater pearls.

The back of the tiara is embellished with ribbons finished with the same beads used in the body of the tiara.

I made this matching barrette to finish the set. I really love seeing my work in Heather's, which is amazingly beautiful and creative. One of these days, maybe I'll talk her into doing a few "big girl" fairytale photos. :)