Ribbon and fabric flower jewellery

I've always found ribbon and fabric flowers to be cute, even if I sometimes get bored of the satin roses, sold everywhere. So of cause it was only a matter of time before I started incorporating them in my jewellery (you've already seen my Spring flower earwires).

Above you see one of my first attempts, called Blommor och trä (Flowers and wood). It was at the time just an experiment using store-bought ribbon flowers. These were a style I hadn't seen before so they inspired me more than the usual satin roses, which I had used before in a couple of simple stringed bracelets. I only had three flowers so it was just barely I had enough supplies to make a bracelet to fit me.

It's a simple design with linked dark wooden beads connected to the loops in the leaves of the flowers. I then choose a clasp that was square, as the wooden beads, with a flower-shaped hole.


Now this is a more dramatic piece, using carnation-like ribbon flowers, big shiny black beads and black findings. It has no name, or rather, I seem to give it a new name every time I show it to someone... Here I tried another way of attaching the flowers by pushing the wire through the leaf and make a loop. Nice try, I don't think it'll stand up to much use... But apart from that, I really like the design and overall style.


This necklace above was made for a bead shop contest on the theme Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) and I called it Tidig sommar (Early summer). Here I attached the flowers by skewering the flowers on headpins and linking them with chunky dyed shell nugget beads. Not my favourite bead type, but I thought they looked like grass and fitted the theme (before making this necklace I thought of using the flowers with my rhyolite coins, which didn't work very well).
I also added a "antique gold" butterfly stamping by punching a hole in the tip of the wing and attaching it to the centre flower.

I mostly do symmetrical jewellery so this time I tried to do something asymmetrical, but I think that part failed...


What is this them? Another early attempt at using sation roses ended this way. Started of as a circlet, but ended half the size (a good size to decorate wide candles). Here the roses are kept in place by twisting two blackened iron wires together. Crystal AB drop beads added to give the illusion of dewdrops.

Many different ways to attach flowers in other words. Normally I prefer skewering them or stringing them as it feels more secure that linking them using the ribbon loops/leaves.

~*~

Nowadays I also make jewellery using my own handmade ribbon flowers, but more of that in another post.