Arabian Nights and some Zardozi

Spin me a story and I may never sleep again............or kill you, for that matter.......

THAT was the origin of the 1001 tale of Arabian Nights and well, the Emperor did fall in love with his quick witted and smart Queen eventually........

This necklace has an almost equally enchanting story behind it.......while we were going through Victorian beads at an alarming rate, Preethi expressed a desire to have a set made using those beads. We had made so many Tanjore pieces for her already (Tanjore being the design we were pairing Victorian beads with) that it was foolhardy to attempt yet another one and look/sound repetitive. We begged Preethi to allow us to experiment with a new technique and after a spread of choices was laid out for her, she went for Zardozi! When you mentin Zardozi, the first thought that comes to your head is flowy silks, rich golden embroidery, pearls, precious stones and Princesses!

We have tried to bring that grand vision to 3-dimensions, incorporating the "richest" elements we possessed - Swarovski pearls, Swarovski crystals, high gloss mica powders and of course, our finest skills........The "fish-like" entangled piece takes inspiration from the Japanese shibori ribbons, sans the ribbed texture. We've gone for a more 'fluid silk' texture and given faux-sequinned look using polymer clay and a smattering of aztec gold mica. When it comes to the zardozi look, we can only describe it as self-inflicted pain that we quite enjoyed :D Line by line, the 'threads' were precisely cut, assembled and highlighted. Some serious swarovski crystal embedding later, this has surely become THE creation of all creations for us!

And, of course, when he's asked to "dress properly" he dresses like a band-baaje wala :D AND loves photobombing Mumma's photos :D

Pouring our blood into polymer clay

An endless budget not only lets you explore a new idea, but also encourages you to experiment.....

The lady who ordered put her trust in us, with an order for her wedding reception jewellery. We were tasked with creating a matching neck piece for a beautiful Sari with a pink, blue and gold combination.  In India, wearing gold jewellery for special occasions is a must, and here she was, opting for customised Jewellery not made from gold. The decision to go all out grand went unspoken! We opted for Polymer clay as it gives us an advantage in selecting colours matching with her Sari and the oh-so-gold-like 3D features.........

We had been contemplating creating a faux metal look. If you are familiar with Silver formation jewellery, you will see that there are intricate patterns, beautifully symmetrical designs, three dimentional settings for precious stones.  While using Polymer clay, it is very common to use texture plates or stamps to give us the intricate patterns required. Our uniqueness comes from the fact that, we upped the ante with completely hand-designed and handmade pattern. Every little 3D effect is completely hand crafted, with no extra help from anything but, a scale, a graph paper and our own imagination. In this particular piece, we kept a beautiful Ice blue Swarovski as the central piece, around which we wove our magic. And it IS magical, how it turned out.

It is a multiple step process you need while narrowing down to the final design. While choosing the Swarovski, we went back and forth, trying to match the colours we had, with the sari and nothing really gelled at first. Having used a Swarovski before, we had decided upon a princess cut as its facets enhance the 3D effect we were aiming for. Once the central colour was settled, we moved on to the designing. Bending to traditional jewellery for inspiration, we chose flowers. At first we experimented with a lotus like 3D look, but the over all design did not leave much space for any intricate work as we had originally planned, so we scrapped that. Our strongest suit so far, has been Calla lilies and while working on another design,

we chanced upon the idea to use smaller petals in a darker shade to offset the central Swarovski colour. Keeping the background gold, we sparsely embroidered using pink and blue in the design. People with symmetrical faces are said to be beautiful, and we used the same idea with our design. With precise cuts to scale, markings to graphs and transferring those onto the polymer clay base was perhaps the most challenging part of the entire exercise. And after almost 2 days of constant cutting, rolling, pasting and molding it was ready! And the only thing that would measure up to the grandeur of the neckpiece was a topaz as dangler.............so, we did that too! Three spiral cut topaz stones fit there like they were made for it! :)

Yesterday we had only handled polymer clay, and today we had moved a step ahead in our own minds with a traditional design.

~ Art'zire/ Pritesh / Richa/ Team