New Cosmia Series!

I'm in high gear, getting ready for the Milford show! Panic and late nights, lots of caffeine and random iPod music have started to force me into new directions, and I'm so glad of it!

My strategy started out to re-create a lot of the pieces which have had positive feedback or have sold well. 10 pieces a day ~ that has also been the goal. I figured that if I had 2 weeks, I'd have plenty of inventory for the show. This was all fine and good for the first few nights ~ I made a bunch more labyrinths, multi-colored enameled nests, and other fun pendants which I love. But something felt ridiculous about it. Beyond the exhaustion, I felt like I wasn't creating anymore.

So one night, I had to get myself out of the studio. I rationalized this by going out to get fabric for a new table display I had been considering.

When I got home, I sat drinking coffee and reading magazines just to clear my head and get a new perspective. Lucky Magazine is always fun to look at to get accessory ideas and trends. And I've just gotten a subscription to Harper's Bazaar... and that's where all this began! In Harper's April issue, there were these amazing pictures of multi-part necklaces - shield-like shapes in series from top to bottom, and rich green red and purple jewel embellished shoes and bags.

OK, so my stuff is distinctly more Bohemian in nature than the normal couture stuff that shows up on their pages, but this all jumped out at me. (I tried and tried to get a link to the images that inspired me, but they're just not up on their site any more!! I will look for images similar to them and upload asap)

And lately - maybe in response to being up late at night, or wishing I was dreaming - I was inspired by a sense of planets and constellations and satellite objects, cosmic in the sense of the cosmos. Little orbs of silver surround lots of sparkly gems.

Somehow I felt they should all be together: the colors, the satellites, and the way that the motion of something in parts would affect the way the piece would sparkle. Pieces connected loosely and nimbly would bring so much life to a piece, I thought, and it became easy to start translating that into this series.

I also wanted to take the focus away from the silver itself so I could key in on color and motion. So I brought in not only richly colored baubles but also brightly colored beads - turquoise and red coral, primarily.

So here it is... I'm so in love with this new Cosmia series!

Here are just some of the items: