Storm of Feathers

Hi guys, Angie here, back again to share with you the first of my necklace designs, made just for Shrimpton Couture. Many of you may have seen the plethora of fringe necklaces and earrings in my Etsy shop, but for this special edition necklace I wanted to make something TRULY one of a kind, something that I could really only make one of, so I knew I had to start with some sort of vintage piece from my stash of goodies.


I sorted through my many boxes and drawers of trims, ribbons, buttons, clasps and chains, and found this great strip of metal mesh, which has always seemed kind of futuristic/post-apocalyptic to me, but yet also very 70s disco. Soooooo futuristic post-apocalyptic disco.

Of course.


So this was my starting point, and from there I came up with the metallic/purply/slightly gothic colour palette of black/silver/lilac and knew that these lilac feathers I had would be perfect. In order to attach the feathers to the chain I made little bundles of three feathers, with the curves of each feather pointing outwards and connected them with small silver fasteners. I love these little bundles, I think they look sweet enough to eat.


I've been wanting to do some sort of bib shaped necklace for awhile, so I pulled out my leather bin (yes, a whole bin...the hoarding problem is deep) looked through my leathers and found a great black leather with a subtle swirling zebra-esque pattern embossed on it. Perfect.


From there I began playing around with the metal mesh, silver chain and some jump rings (the rings used to connect chain) and discovered that some of my rings were the perfect size to fit right through the mesh, and the design was born from that. So from there I just played around, adding chain, taking off chain, playing with the shape of the leather bib, moving feathers around, until I was completely happy with the design. In the end this piece reminds me a bit of a storm: the cloud of feathers, the metallic strips reminiscent of the electricity/lightning, and the fringe the heavy flow of dark rain. Whoa man, that's totally deep.

xo
Angie

Feathered & Fringed

Hello dears, Angie from Norwegian Wood here again. I'm popping in to let you all know that as of tonight, all my goodies for the Shrimpton Couture site are in the mail, on their way to the protective and able hands of Cherie! Over the next few days I'll post pics of the 6 pieces I created for this mini collection; 4 deluxe harnesses and 2 very special necklaces.

The first piece I'm SO excited to reveal to you is the Feathered & Fringed harness! As any of you who are followers of Norwegian Wood know, I'm pretty obsessed with the idea of adding things to my shoulders, so when Cherie told me to "go wild, do whatever you want!" my mind immediately screamed "put feathers on your shoulders, do it, DO IT!!"

So the next step was to find the perfect feathers. I hunted down these lovely vintage feather pads at a small local trim shop, and snipped and trimmed them until they were the perfect little shoulder sized half moons. Then I laid them out on the shoulder pads to have a look and thought....

"Huh. Doesn't really seem "WOW" enough. It obviously needs some fringe."

And of course, why stop at one layer? I was inspired by the natural colours in the feathers, and decided to do three layers of fringe in olive green, cream and black. Finally I felt satisfied and began putting the harness together. I recently found these great antique brass coloured clasps, but was only able to find six of them, so I knew they had to be saved for a special project, and this one seemed to be calling out for them. I toyed around with adding more straps or adding something else to the bottom of the harness, but in the end I decided that anything else would just compete with the feathers. Time to listen to my moms old adage "Angie, for gods sake, don't gild a lily!"

xo
Angie