My Work

All of my pieces are made from real flowers or other things from nature, such as butterfly wings (working on those. They are so delicate and tricky.), leaves, pine cones, etc. Most of the flowers come from my gardens or what I gather from the wild. My sister presses some of her flowers for me. Each flower is gathered and pressed with no dyes. I press the flowers in plain old copy paper then put them between the pages of heavy books. I stack them up and top them off with a heavy brick or two. I leave them there for a few weeks until they are good and done. Once they are done, I file them for use later.

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Each piece of jewelry is unique. I love working with the different types of flowers and colors and seeing what I can come up with. Some are fun and funky and some are more classic. I like to use some more unusual flowers, too- like some that are considered weeds. I had to run out and collect some chickweed before my husband weedwhacked! I also use some unusual flowers. One time my onions went to seed. The resulting flowers on them were beautiful and so delicate. Same as the flowers of the bugle weed that invades our lawn. I’ve been know to creep along the yard on my hands and knees, inspecting weeds to see if they were good jewelry candidates.

Not all flowers are good from my work. They have to be tough. By that I mean the flowers need to be substantial, not too thin and papery to be able to stand up to the resin. If the flowers are too fragile the resin will soak right through them, like vinca and phlox. And the flowers have to be rather flat or be able to be pressed flat. In general, tubular flowers are not good candidates. And of course, they can’t be too big. Some of my favorite flowers to work with include forget-me-nots, viola, baby’s breath, coral bells, sanvitalia, verbena, plus many more. Some don’t need pressing, like strawflowers.

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Putting it all together

Once I have my my flowers pressed and ready (I have tons now, but am always pressing through the summer), then I am ready to make my jewelry. I use molds and bezels- both open and closed. The closed bezels need different colored backgrounds. For the colored backgrounds I use basic water based- acrylic paint. It’s fun to try different colors, but also challenging to match flowers to colors I like. Once I get a plan for a piece or pieces (I usually do about 4 to 6 pieces at a time), I mix the resin the do a pour. I do layers of resin and each layer needs to cure for 24 hours. The first layer is the base layer, the second layer is what I call the sticky layer. This is the layer where I place the flowers. Then comes the final pour. For open bezels there is another layer on the back after I peel off the backing tape. After everything is cured, then the final touches- added the rings and hooks, filing and smoothing any rough edges, and putting them on cards and labeling them. Each card names the flower (or flowers) used.

You can see and learn more about each type of jewelry by clicking the links on the pictures below:

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