Twiggy's Bangle

I've been so looking forward to sharing the story of Twiggy's bangle with you.  Actually it is much more than just Twiggy's bangle, it is the story of a beautiful brood of grandchildren, its a story about gathering random sticks and turning one of them in to a beautiful sterling silver, hallmarked bangle and its the story of my jewellery making journey.  I know you are going to love to see it!

Julia and I met around 8 years ago when she had 2 beautiful grandchildren and she wanted to wear some simple jewellery which would represent her lovely girls.  She wanted each bangle to be different and we started off with a smooth bangle with some little hammer taps spaced out around the bangle and a hammered bangle.  Making 2 different bangles isn't that difficult but Julia's family started to grow and the pressure was on to make a different bangle each time!  It was the final bangle which has been such an exciting adventure.

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Julia's bangle is made up of 4 bangles and one charm. The charm is a flat band which held all the other 4 bangles together so that they didn't move around too much. With the arrival of Twiggy, we needed to add another bangle. Julia is a garden designer and so with name like Twiggy my thoughts turned to an actual twig. Julia was really excited about how we could turn a twig in to a precious bangle so I sent her out on a mission with all her grandchildren to collect a basketful of twigs. Some of them were obviously far too big to even consider, but in that basket was a piece of blackambar, which came from Julia's garden and was a plant which had a special meaning to her too. It was perfect.

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I had one 10cms piece of the blackambar cast and both Julia and I had our breath taken away by how beautiful the casting was. The silver twig had all the teeny tiny little buds intact and the texture was dreamy! I soldered 3 pieces together and was under orders not to make it too perfect, Julia wanted it to feel organic.

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The final stage of this make was to collect all the bangles together, add the leaf charm and then then solder them together so that it is a bangle which doesn't separate each of the bangles. This was no easy feat given that all the bangles had been made separately and there is a multitude of solder joints in there. After a really good polish, Julia's bangle was ready to wear and looks absolutely stunning. We both might have shed a tear at the journey of this bangle. It is worn every single day whether Julia is designing gardens or planting them.

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Julia says that her bangle is 'beyond beautiful' and I totally agree, and it is a special one which currently Twiggy is cutting her latest teeth on!