I challenged myself to focus on craftsmanship-- craftsmanship, craftsmanship, craftsmanship is everything!-- and while I logged more hours than I had intended, it was worth it! (This is the curse of custom orders; I consistently undercharge on these things.)

 The first mask was the women's rhinestone and cream pearl. The bride wanted a fuller and more solid design than the first red mask, and she sent me inspiration photos for an extravaganza of swirls to go up one side of the mask.

(It's great to work with people who have an eye for design and knows what they want, but are still happy to let me do my thing).



All of the pearls and rhinestones were lashed to the mask using thin sterling plated wire. I was surprised by how much stability the beadwork added to the piece!


Unfortunately, thanks to crazy college classes, I just barely made the deadlines I set. I didn't have a chance to take many photographs of the white mask, but these here modeled by my lovely friend do a great job of showing how the mask wears on a real person!

This mask just sings with elegance and whimsy-- if you'll pardon the flowery language! I can't wait to see how it coordinates with the bride's dress. :)


Now, for my pride and joy.


Don't get me wrong; I love the white mask and am in love with all of the design elements that my customer requested.

But this black mask is a step up in craftsmanship and technique for me. A leap, really.

Crafting this was one of those magical times when every almost-mistake turned out to be exactly what I needed, and my fingers and eyes seemed to work of their own accord. So many technical "aha!" insights fired in my brain while problem-solving this design. My fingers now know their way around wirewrapping like they didn't before.

It's a strange thing to explain, and another use of flowery, cliched language, but something "clicked."


I was asked to create this piece after the white mask was delivered, and from the start we needed it to be structurally a different kind of piece.

The white mask has large eye-holes to showcase nice bold eye makeup, but unless the groom wanted to sport eyeshadow and guyliner, this mask needed significantly smaller eye holes.

The problem is that everyone's eyes are really unique, and I needed to find a sweet spot where this mask could fit anyone's face without covering the eyes.

The general shape of the mask, too, needed to be different. I filled an entire sketchbook page with shape ideas. How should I make a pearl-studded wirewrapped swirly mask look more masculine?


The design that I finally decided on was much more solid and filled-out than any mask I've made before. The swirls are contained inside the mask, on the sides, rather than spiraling around the outside of the mask.

I attached dozens and dozens of tiny beads using tiny wire wrapped in very specific ways so that the entire skeleton of the mask was solidly filled with black pearls.

The beaded zig-zags above the nose was another design input from the bride; I had been struggling with how to fill in that space without overwhelming it. Her idea worked really well!


My brother asked to model it, and, in typical drama-kid style, jazzed up his look with some "dashing accessories."

I am so honored to make custom jewelry like this, and am especially grateful to be making pieces that will be a part of this couple's marriage beginnings! Theirs sounds like a very unique wedding and I wish them all the joy.

This week is finals week, and to start things off right my campus ministry held a Masquerade formal on Dead Day Eve. I could have easily worn the mask that I made for my 16th birthday that I was so excited about, but would that do? No, of course not. This is me we are talking about. I had to make something new!

Almost a year ago, I scribbled a little note in my sketchbook about "wire masks with swirlies." I can't remember which sketchbook and I very well might just be making that up, but I think it was written somewhere, and I certainly played with the idea in my head for a bit.

My problem was that I am very ridiculously busy and I kept prioritizing other jewelry projects, particularly the tried-and-true variants that I know I can sell, because, you know, it's quite nice to have money. Although I had the opportunity to do some experimenting last summer, there still wasn't time for everything!

The night before the dance, I sat down at my desk with sterling silver plated wire, rhinestones, three boxes of beads, pliers, a mirror, and some good music. After an hour I joined some of my friends in my dorm, and we all worked on masks (they made some gorgeous painted ones) until after midnight!


(Fun fact: I made my necklace in a metalworks class, the first ever jewelry class I've taken, last semester-- I'll blog about that class soon. The chain is made from solid sterling silver wire and solid fine silver wire and took at least five hours to make. I love it.)

I found that it was quite difficult to mold the mask to fit my face. It must have been quite a picture-- every couple of minutes, after hammering wire in my little dorm room, I held crazy strands of wire up to my face and shaped it just so.




Of course I couldn't resist putting at least a couple of my favorite Czech glass leaf beads on the mask!



The circlet seems to fit everyone who asked to try it on-- including my lovely suitemate, pictured here.




See our cute little Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the back? It's actually the topper from my family's old tree, which we stuck in a jar and taped to the table. :)


Thanks to my amazing suitemate for helping to model!

I only took one in-progress shot. Here it is! At this point I was not very hopeful because the wire kept going everywhere and I may or may not have poked myself in the eye once. I will not be doing that again! I've learned my lesson!