Poppy-rocket-book

When someone asks me to make a custom piece it's an exciting process - the best part of jewellery-making. Ideas fly back and forth until we hit on a plan. This design was to be based around a silver ring with a collection of gems and silver shapes hanging from it, building on the theme of one of my seaside necklaces.

The customer, a fellow blogger, had asked for three charms, one to represent each of her children. To denote one of her boys, who is passionate about reading, I made a little silver book. The other little lad is excited about space travel so his charm is a fifties-style rocket (with echoes of Wallace and Gromit's spaceship). Her little girl is represented by a poppy - it's a frequent nickname for her. To give an idea of scale, the rocket is 15mm long.

By pure chance, the children's three birthstones, and two more gems with special significance, turned out to be complimentary tones of blues and greens. There's a little uncut rock sapphire hanging beside the poppy and I added a rice-Krispie-ish tiny vintage freshwater pearl as a highlight.

This necklace gave me the making buzz that Tania blogged about recently. Starting with a lump of precious silver clay and knowing I needed to make a rocket had that plunging feeling about it. It was like the slightly scary high of being on a zip wire. I just had to jump off and get on with it. After I'd finished the rocket I confess I danced around a little bit - it was part relief, part giddiness. It was good and not a square of chocolate was in sight.

Massive thanks to Forestpoppy- I've heard that she's received the necklace through the post just now and will be opening it in a quiet moment later, when her littlest is asleep.

Eeep: nearly forgot, the winner of the little wreath is Kristina - could you send me your address and I'll pop it in the post. Congratualtions!