Ms W. was asked to be a bridesmaid at her friend's wedding. The wedding theme was bright, joyful colours and her dress would be a vivid aqua. She had seen my wire weaving designs and wanted me to create an eye-catching hair ornament using wire weaving techniques, that would look like "something Zena the Warrior Princess might wear"! Ms W. would wear the hair ornament on the wedding day; but also, she wanted it to convert to a necklace so that she could choose how to wear it on other occasions.

She had a rough idea of the design that she wanted me to weave, which she drew and emailed to me. She wanted a central round semi-precious stone that was an aqua or turquoise colour to match her dress, and the metal to be copper to give a strong colour contrast.  I sourced some stones of a few different types and patterns and asked her which she preferred. She chose a beautiful natural turquoise cabochon shot through with black iron ore. 

Figuring out how to make the piece convertible between a hair ornament and a pendant was a little tricky, but we decided to have it fix onto a commercial hair comb using a press stud (metal popper). I riveted one side of the press stud to the copper plate behind the stone and adapted the comb to fix the other side of the press stud to it. I left enough space at the corners of the wire weaving design so that I could hook on a handmade necklace cord with custom wire clips.