I spent the second half of November and entire December making Bridal silk thread jewelry sets. I created two necklaces, three pairs of earrings and five different sets of bangles. Of these three sets were for a childhood friend of mine whose husband’s cousin was getting married.
This particular wedding in question was supposedly completely designed by the bride with specific themes, colour palettes and concepts in mind. This practice is just in its nascent stages in India, unlike the west where most, if not all decisions about the wedding are made by the bride. It naturally meant that there were exacting standards for the clothes and jewelry to worn by the wedding party. My friend had chosen three sarees to wear for the engagement, wedding, and reception respectively and wanted me to design jewelry for them. You would have seen her Reception saree and the rhinestone and zardosi jewelry that I made to match it in my earlier post.
Since she lives in USA, we exchanged dozens of emails to finalise the pieces that were required, color, material, and embellishments. She was particular that they be Bridal silk thread sets with whatever individualistic flavour that I could impart to them.
For the first set I played it safe and made a necklace similar to the one I made in the pink and purple set and also in my Bridal party LOTD post. In spite of this decision, this set was a lot of work as getting the colors right for just photographs was so difficult. It was brick red and a deep salmon double shade saree with self jacquard a bright magenta pallu and as it looked dull they wanted to get gold cut work embroidery done on it.
I made a magenta pendant with red stripes and later added gold thread to match the embroidery on the saree. As everything – saree, blouse, jewelry was all so matching-matching I added rhinestones and pearl stone chains as accents. This connected well with the pendant focal creative good rhythm and movement through repetition.The Jhumka has one line of clear rhinestone and one line of pearlstone put together and the bangles are half-half with red stripes. I embellished these by myself because I couldn’t really explain what I envisioned to someone else.
The second one (above) was for a deep greenish blue saree with a golden yellow border. By this time I was bored with working on Silk thread so I asked her if I could do a hand painted metal pendant. After a lot of initial ideas, we finally settled on the pre-cut peacock that I had. At this point, I had no idea how to add silk elements to it to make it match with the bangles (again by Prakashini of Twilight Charms). Somewhere, I had read that peacocks come out to graze at sunrise and that inspired me to come up with a sun in the background. After that Ahaa moment it was easy to create the necklace with brushed gold metal beads, crystals and silk thread wrapped beads. For the earrings I chose peacock studs, colored them and went with a silk disc for a dangler. I think it is so much more smarter than a regular Jhumka. What do you think?
My silk thread story does not quite end here. I am yet to show three sets of zardosi bangles that I made – not just designed but sets made. So keep following my blog, subscribing to my social media channels until them.
Hope you find it interesting
Cheers
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