Archive for the ‘Fashion’ Category

Inspiration | A look back at our “Flower Lace” necklace

Monday, October 25th, 2010

I’m working on a custom ‘skin’ design for our phone, since a black phone on a black desk is often hard to find without having to call said phone. I thought it’d be fun to do the same pattern that we use for our Flower Lace necklaces, since it’s one of my favorites of everything we’ve ever designed:

In looking through my working files for this design, I came across this bookmarked blog posting by Oh Joy! with the original inspiration for the pattern:

Oh Joy! had blogged about NY Fashion Week in September 2007 and the Lela Rose‘s Spring 2008 collection.  It’s been 3 years, and I still love that dress and our engraved wood necklace that was inspired by it.

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Inspiration | Turquoise: 2010 color of the year

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Did you know that world-renowned color authority Pantone, named Turquoise 15-5519 their color of the year for 2010?

Pantone names a trend-setting color every year, so if you’re ever wondering what to get someone you know who keeps up with fashion trends, the ‘Color of the Year‘ is an excellent jumping-off point.

If you’re looking for a contemporary jewelry piece to give you that pop of turquoise, we suggest:

Our Aqua Hydrangea foliage necklace. While this vibrantly dyed flower is a slightly bluer hue than Pantone 15-5519, the variations in the color of the flower shows a nice range of blues to turquoises. It’s a great pop of color without being too overdone.

Turquoise nepalese paper inlay modern pendant
Our Nepalese floral pendants in the tone-on-tone turquoise color.  These pendants feature an inlay of paper made from the lamali lokta plant made by Nepalese village co-operatives.

Our carved Asian turquoise lends texture as well as color as an accessory.  We love the contrast of the very smooth machined steel against the curves of the turquoise.

Washi pendant in stainless steelAnd finally, one of our most popular washi patterns — plum blossoms in a slight variations of turquoise.

It’s easy to see why turquoise was picked as the color of the year for 2010 — it’s versatile, cheery and just plain beautiful.

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Inspiration | More virtual shopping spreads

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

When we did our “virtual shopping” mood boards a few weeks ago, we actually did a couple more than what were posted.

So without further ado, here they are:

Hangin\' out with the guys

I’ll admit I forgot to add in the captions this time around but, you can get full shopping details on the polyvore version of the spread (click on each of the images).  (As before, with Eric’s “guy” shopping, everything can be found in one store: Bluefly.com, and he paired it with the a solid Blend Creations “Dragon” stainless steel pendant).

Hot evening out

I love a really good LBD (little black dress) — probably too much since many of my “nice” dresses tend to be black.  I also really like wearing red accessories with them and I think there’s something quite “classic’ about it.  The Blend Creations red bamboo pendant and earrings have quite the shock of red and perfect for the LBD :)

Finally, the last one makes me wish that it would stay summer just a little bit longer:

Summer breeze casual

It’s a watermelon-inspired colour palette with our “Pink plum blossoms” necklace and earrings paired with a bright pink jersey dress and the tailored bag.  (I have a thing for structured purses it seems).

Happy shopping :)

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Inspiration | The guy’s take on virtual window shopping

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Funky modern guy's jewelry

In the continuation of a theme, I’ve decided to do my version of Vivian’s post yesterday, where she showed our “flowerish” engraved jewelry matched with a summer outfit.

For the guy’s outfit, we’ve got a “smart casual” look. Starting from the top-left corner and going clockwise, the outfit is made up of:

Yes, I realize that everything in the outfit comes from the same store, but it’s true to the guy way of shopping: Get in, buy everything you could possibly need and get the heck out.

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Inspiration | Virtual window shopping

Monday, July 21st, 2008

I would have said Windows® shopping, but our PC has decided not to connect to the internet so we’re almost exclusively Mac-surfing now.

I’ve been wanting to do a little shopping, but it seems whenever we have the free time to go shopping, it’s usually past closing time at the mall.  Instead, it’s virtual shopping for me and the added benefit is that there’s an overwhelming selection, and I can always pretend that everything would fit me perfectly. :)

I created a little inspiration board with the outfit I found for a fictitious dress-up lunch with the girls:
Summer fashion inspiration

In case you’re interested in the details, clockwise from the top-left corner:

Now, I created this little inspiration piece in Illustrator, but if you’re ever in the mood to pull together your own inspiration boards, you can whittle away some time playing with Polyvore, where I was able to pull together the same outfit, complete with clickable links, in a fraction of the time.

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Weddings | Bridesmaid jewelry

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

We’ve been busy with making up a set of bridesmaid jewelry for five members of a bridal party.

If you’re curious, we were told that the bridal party would be wearing strapless dresses in taupe silk very similar to the dress below by Aria dress (style 160), only with the double-hem in taupe/brown and turquoise sashes. The bride wanted to add a splash of colour to the necklines that would co-ordinate with the hits of turquoise used in her wedding.

aria dress style 160

We suggested the turquoise plum blossoms necklace for the bridesmaids with the matching earrings (from Blend Creations of course!). They were a great choice for the bride who said she loved contemporary, modern and funky sort of styling. :) Even better — her bridesmaids are pretty happy with the choices, which is good since the jewelry was both bridal party accessories and bridesmaid gifts all rolled into one.

bridesmaid necklacebridesmaid earrings

For the bride’s niece, the “junior” bridesmaid who didn’t want to be left out of the bridesmaid jewelry shopping, we went with the small pendant version of the same plum blossom pattern, (but on a silver chain):

junior bridesmaid pendant

The wedding will be at the end of the month, and I know the focus is on the bride and all, but I do love it when brides choose to have their bridal party wear our contemporary jewelry. I can’t wait to see the wedding photos!

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Inspiration | These boots were made for walkin’

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Whenever possible, we like to exercise our design-brains outside of our own jewelry designs.  

Doc Martens is having a fun little design contest (that happens to be some very clever marketing, btw) where you can design your own set of boots. You can design either the 8-hole or the 14-hole boot and they’ll be picking two winners. One will be decided by the popular vote, and the other will be decided by their panel.

I thought it’d be fun to do a quick design with the 14-hole boot and when I checked the status of my boot I’d already had one vote — a “Hate it!”. Haha. Well, it’s not for everyone, though neither are most of the pretty outlandish boot designs on the Doc Martens design site.

Doc Martens boot design

If you feel like giving my boot design the “Love”, go visit the Flowerish boot design page and vote.

You can also go there and design your own boot — if you plan on using their templates, a word of warning, they have Photoshop and Illustrator templates, but only in the latest, CS3 version :P.

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