Autumn Wedding Jewelry Ensemble

This past autumn, I had the honor of designing a jewelry set for five bridesmaids!

The color theme was reds and golds, with hints of pearl and green. Each of the girls would be wearing a different dress in the same color, and each girl had different jewelry requirements (pierced/non-pierced ears, short/long necklace, etc). 

The necklace shape is also adjustable-- since I created a braided base, it could be gently pinched into a pointed shape, or a flat, or rounded style. If you look closely at the pictures of the bridesmaids, you'll see that each necklace is worn differently!

The bride wore a thick lace veil with a bright, bold wreath of red and gold flowers and leaves on top, and the jewelry was designed to coordinate with her style.

It goes without saying that these five sets were a fair bit of work! Each necklace had a braided base that looks very similar to my braided circlets. Beads and glass leaves of all kinds were woven on in matching patterns, and beads adorned the adjustable golden chain.

These are the earrings and ear cuffs designed for the bridesmaids!

The ear cuffs were beautifully decorative; the bride loves fairytale styles so I had fun going overboard with the sparkly bling!

One of the girls had double piercings and wore two sets of dangles! I'd never really heard of that kind of pairing before, but wouldn't you agree that it is a lovely combination?



The other girls all wore variations of my Enchanted Forest Earrings in gold and red.

I also created a pair of barefoot sandals for the bride! The picture below is with shoes from our outdoor photoshoot, but these "fairy sandals" work well barefoot, too!

This is the entire set of jewelry, representing a couple weeks of work!

I didn't photograph the rings very well, but in this picture you can see the leaf flower ring and the gold-and-red wirewrapped rosette ring on the maid of honor!

This was one of the most unique weddings I've attended, style-wise, and I had a blast designing jewelry for such lovely girls!

I've created many pieces of jewelry for various brides, and I've even designed an entire set of jewelry for a bride, bridal party, and mother-of-the-bride, but this was the first time creating wedding pieces for someone I knew! I am also friends with all of the bridal party, so I had the opportunity to take their personal styles into consideration.

In addition, I also helped out last minute by being the second shooter at the wedding! I wound up taking over three hundred pictures of the ceremony, photoshoot, and reception.

It's not a fairytale wedding with friends until you do a hilarious gag photo, is it?

The park we took photos had at these awesomely weird concrete frogs...

So... I did mention that this was a group of my friends from high school and that everyone involved are fantastic geeks, yes? While the main photographer was off taking sweet pictures of the bride and groom, the bridesmaids and groomsmen posed with my Lord of the Rings weaponry.

Aren't they just too cute?

Best wishes and lots of prayers for the new Mr. and Mrs.! 

Elven Photoshoot | Sneak Peek

Warrior royalty mother and daughters

On the 4th of July my close-knit extended family stayed at our house for a few days, and I convinced four of my cousins and two of my aunts to dress up in my Elven dresses and the Lord of the Rings swords and staffs for a quick photoshoot.

Fun fact: the girl in the middle of the top picture dyed her hair with Kool-Aid!

Elegant Elven mother and daughter

My relatives are so photogenic that I deleted barely twenty of the three hundred photos I took.

Going on a journey

Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky...

Before the photoshoot we had doodled "henna" on ourselves. We used cheap eyeliner and sprayed it with extra-strong hairspray. The "henna" lasted for two days!

Yeah, don't get on our bad side.

REALLY don't get on our bad side.

Next week, look for a big masterpost with quite a few of my favorite images from the photoshoot!

Rosie, Princess and Photographer

Always a smile!

"Shaylynn, WHY ARE YOU BLOWING A FAN IN MY FACE?!"

This is my sister, Rosie. If you've read my blog before, you've probably seen her quite a bit. She is a fearsome little girl who will gladly go defeat any dragon with her super-awesome taekwando skillz gained both from classes and from having four brothers, but she is such a sweetheart and girly-girl, too. Sometimes more of a girly-girl than me (when I was her age I hated it when fantasy books had romance instead of pure adventure. Just today, Rosie spent quite a while debating whether Miri from Princess Academy should be with Peder or the prince.)

Basically she is a real life princess.

Not too long ago I was photographing on of the Aurora Circlets I made (this time, finally with silk in pink champagne to more closely match the ribbon in OuaT), and she was in my studio making some jewelry. Of course I roped her in to being my little model minion. I am such an evil overlord sister. MUAHAhahaha!

She just got her hair cut (it used to reach past her hips) and positively squealed when she saw how "flippy and swingy" her hair is now, especially in these pictures.

I'm going to lose proper English for just a minute and enter the dialect of Tumblrspeak: d'AWWW ALL THE CUTENESS I. CAN'T. EVEN. WHAT.

She also modeled the circlet that Gwen wears as Queen in the BBC show Merlin. I was very excited to be able to create such a close replica, and Rosie was just ecstatic that I FINALLY made some jewelry based on her favorite show.

Then, I gave her a few tips and she photographed some pieces on me!

(Above is a double necklace set inspired by the one that was featured in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and below is a necklace I handstamped that says "all that is gold does not glitter").

She also got some ones with my face in it which is funny because I can't pull off the whole starry-eyed princess look.

Rosie has been becoming very good at photography and has been getting some beautiful shots of our baby sister "Josie." I should download the photos this weekend and teach her some basic Photoshop editing!

I'm so grateful that she'll come in my studio and pose for me at random times of the day! :) I sure miss her when I'm away at school!

The Prop Replica Weapons from "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit"!!!

Major image overload post! This one is for my geeky readers who, like me, have to see ALL THE PHOTOS if The Lord of the Rings is involved.

Gandalf the Grey's staff, Orcrist, Andruil, Glamdring, Gandalf the White's staff, and Sing at the bottom. Kili's weapon is yet to arrive!

A few months ago, I won in the Weapons category of an art contest for my favorite series of all time (Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit) judged by three of my favorite Tolkien-artists of all time! The prize is prop replica weapons from the movies! And they finally arrived!!!

(If you want to see more of the picture, see my old posts here and here).

I will be doing a more detailed description of all the swords and staffs down the line and will probably do many themed photoshoots. For now, here's enough snapshots to fill Smaug's lair to the brim!

When the boxes finally arrived after weeks of waiting, I had to wait three whole hours for Dad to get home from work. It was torture, staring at the boxes without opening them!

When we finally got them out of the boxes-- AHH! They are gorgeous, very accurate and honest-to-goodness swords. I now have a lot of respect for any warrior (or actors) who lugged around heavy swords all day!

We were all too caught up in the moment to bother with cameras much, but here's some of my family geeking out with me!

All of the swords came with these beautiful wooden plaques to hang them on the wall. The staffs have smaller resin and metal ones.

My favorites are Sting's plaque (top right, with the celtic knotwork and Fellowship brooch leaf) and Andruil's (bottom right, with the tree of Gondor). Orcrist (top left) has the same design has the hilt of the sword-- it's the emblem of the Gondolin king to whom the sword used to belong.

Thus far, I've only been able to do one quick impromptu photoshoot with two of my friends, but I know how much some of you have been looking forward to seeing the swords, so I'd thought I'd share this now! I have plans to do a costumed photoshoot sometime down the line and to get nice close-up photos of the swords and staffs (without fingerprints all over them), but that will probably have to wait until spring.

Isn't her hat cute??

It was freezing and none of us had planned on being outside taking photos, so if we look a little pale and red-cheeked, that's why. :)

Here I am, holding Orcrist, the "goblin cleaver" which was a Gondolin Elf sword used by Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit. If you aren't a Tolkienite, none of that made sense to you. If you are, OHMYGOSH isn't it cooooool?! :)

Detail of Orcrist.

We all geeked out. A LOT. Seriously-- we were holding swords from LotR and the Hobbit. What is there to NOT get extremely excited about?

This beautifully engraved sword is the replica of Gandalf's trusty blade Glamdring.

Gandalf's staff even has the "G" rune carved into it.

This sword is Anduriel, Flame of the West, the sword of the Aragorn the King of Gondor. Forged from the shards of Narsil, "Renewed shall be blade that was broken / the crownless again shall be king" and all that-- THIS IS ANDRUIL and it is HUGE and heavy!

 

The runic engraving says, in Quenya, "I am Anduril who was Narsil, the sword of Elendil. Let the thralls of Mordor flee me."

My brother, the Hobbit.

Thanks to a completely obsessed family (I must admit that I am not the most die-hard fan compared to my tween/teen brothers), he is a true Tolkienite. I kid you not. He loves Middle Earth. Yesterday I was wearing a golden skeleton key on my necklace and he came up to me, fingered it, and said in his cute five year old accent, "One key to rule them all! It's a prrrrrecioussss!" He then pestered me to read him "That funny poem that goes 'Troll sat alone on his seat of stone'!"

When I am geeking out because I won an art contest and now own actual prop replicas from my favorite movie trilogy of all time (and it's 'prequel'!), it is very difficult for me to keep a straight face. I also don't do well in front of the camera. Lots and lots of classic "Shaylynn pictures" ensued. :P

The cloak which made my friends look like Elves made me look like a Jedi.

Above is a photo of me holding Sting the 'letter opener'! It's very difficult to imagine an accurate size for Hobbits until you are holding a to-scale knife that is a long sword for Bilbo and Frodo.

Also, I was so very serious. Don't you totally see the resemblance to the warrior-like Bilbo Baggins?

Yeah, I thought so.

I can't help it, I'm too excited!

DON'T WANNA GROW UP.

My little brother kept photobombing our pictures!

While I was in the process of writing this blog post my little sister came and offered to take pictures of me "all dressed up like Eowyn or Arwen or somebody"! I need to teach her how to hold the camera steady but we had fun in the snow! 

(This is our first sledding-worthy snowfall of the season and we've spent countless hours riding down the hills. It's heavenly!)

I only used Glamdring for these shots because it was way the heck too cold to stay outside long enough in order to pose with multiple props.

I think you've seen more photos of me in this one blog post than I've ever posted before. :P

I promise that I'll take detailed close-up shots of the swords sometime soon!

Still I am a bit in shock-- the honor of winning in an art contest, and the extreme awesomeness of the prize... eeeeeeeek!