My friend Cindy Forrester won first place!!!

I am so proud of her!! She entered her wonderful mixed media jewelry piece in Rings & Things 2008 contest, Your Designs Rock, and her piece won first place in the Alternative Materials category. Yay, Cindy!!

More of Cindy’s work can be found on Cindy Forrester Designs

Alternative Materials Category
Safe

Artist: Cindy Forrester (Deltona, FL)
First Place, Alternative Materials

My inspiration came from the drawer pull and keyhole cover. I found these gorgeous pieces at an antique fair. They just spoke to me of being safe behind lock and key. I came across the gorgeous agate and copper trade beads at Rings & Things and knew they would work wonderfully with the design. I separated the two pieces of the drawer pull. On one piece, which is on the side of the necklace, I attached a transferred image of a lady. I soldered the other piece to the round glass pendant and soldered filigree to the top, to portray a door knocker. Behind this piece, in the glass pendant, is a transferred photo of a vintage house. I attached a transferred image of a door into the keyhole of the keyhole cover. The square pendant has another transferred vintage photo of a lady standing inside her home with an open window looking out over the city. I added a piece of vintage lace, a vintage dictionary word (“safe”) and, on the back, I added aged decorative paper and more words (“to return safe and sound, God keep you”). I also used two rusty keys in the design. All of the pieces just seemed to come together to create a very unusual piece.

The processes I used were soldering the pendants and drawer pull, wire wrapping the beads and using liver of sulfur to age the sterling silver and copper. This piece took a couple of weeks, working on it in the evenings and weekends. The obstacles were to get the drawer pull and filigrees soldered onto the round pendant and making each of the two connected the right lengths, with each side a different length. – Cindy Forrester