Jewelry Stories from The Spice King
Thank you so much for joining me today for my latest edition of Jewelry Stories!
I cannot tell y’all how much I enjoy bringing these posts to you every week. I hope you’ll forgive me that I took a break last week. Everything seemed to hit at once, and I found myself needing to focus on other things other than books and jewelry. 🙁
This week, I’m featuring one of my favorite reads of the year – The Spice King by Elizabeth Camden. I have only read a handful of her books over the years, and after seeing so many of my fellow book friends reading her newest release this year (The Prince of Spies), I knew that I would need to start at the beginning of the series to see what all the fuss was about. Needless to say, I was hooked from the first page and binged my way to the end.
I bookmarked several passages that I knew would be perfect to transform into jewelry, and this may be one of my favorite collections that I have put together this year. Below, I give you 6 new designs inspired by 5 separate excerpts. See you at the end where I’ll explain my creative inspiration. 🙂
Dr. Norwood’s main interest was the orchids, but he’d asked her to go after the entire collection.
While the other ladies had their upswept hair styled with jeweled clips, Annabelle’s dark hair was worn in a simple braid down the center of her back.
He nodded to the sunflower brooch pinned to her collar. It was the only jewelry she wore, a reminder of Kansas.
Heavy in her skirt pocket was the horseshoe Elaine had given her for luck.
“We also need to finalize plans for a trip to Baltimore so the first lady may visit a lace-making factory.”
***
What do you think?! Oh, I hope you like them! 🙂 I must confess that when I read the line about the lace-making factory, I wanted to incorporate lace in as many pictures as I could (even though it is not a major focus of the book, I still love it).
Orchids are mentioned throughout this novel, specifically a rare vanilla orchid that Annabelle is trying to locate among Gray’s collection. I’ve had these silver orchid connectors in my stash for a while now, and this book was the perfect match for them.
The jeweled hair clips are actually made of buttons. I snipped the shank off the back and filed them down to make them as flat as possible, then affixed them to the silver filigree and onto the hair pin.
The sunflowers proved more difficult at first than I expected! Brooches are not really in style at the moment, but I didn’t want to let this mention of jewelry go to waste. I found the gold sunflower charm first, then a week or so later, managed to find a chain that matched in color. I wanted the overall design to be simple yet feminine as that’s how I envision Annabelle. I stumbled upon the larger sunflower charm a couple of weeks later, and I took my time thinking up the best way to incorporate it into this collection. Since it’s so bright, I wanted a muted color for the ribbon and I love how it matches up with the gray. Bees are not specifically mentioned in the story, but I thought the honeycomb/bee charm paired quite well with that bright colorful sunflower.
Most horseshoe charms I’ve seen over the years just do not appeal to me. Maybe that’s because they all seem to have a heavy southwestern influence. Nothing against that – it’s just not my personal style. I stumbled upon these heart charms in the scrapbooking section at the store, and knew they would match the overall theme. I used the same gray ribbon, and paired the horseshoe charm with a gorgeous peachy rose.
Last of all, that lace pendant. To say I love it the most would be an understatement. I have seen so many different designs like it on Pinterest over the years, and the instant I read “lace-making factory,” there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to find a way to include lace in a piece of jewelry. I cut a piece of lace to size so that it would lay inside this tray pendant, then secured it and the glass inside. I’ve had the extra trays and necklaces on hand for years after doing a custom design for another author. So glad that I had just enough to get this one made, and have a few left over! This necklace has loads of possibilities in the future – I can see it paired with a cluster of different beads and charms – but for now, simple seems best.
I do so hope that you’ll leave a comment on this post letting me know which design is your favorite! This is the largest collection I’ve designed since doing Tidewater Bride by Laura Frantz (it was 12 pieces total!), and I really wanted these pieces to fit together in a beautiful way. As always, each image above is captioned with a link underneath if you are interested in learning more about a particular style. I am always working on new designs for future posts as well (designs for the other two books in this series are coming soon)! If you aren’t already a subscriber, take a minute to sign up for my email list so you can get notifications when that next post goes live.
Until next time!
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