Luscious Vintage Crystals

From the moment I first can remember my life I was enchanted by the sparkle of crystal. I loved the old black & white movies with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dressed for a night out.

He in Tails and she in a filmy gown complete with sparkling jewelry.

The sparkle and gleam has caused me to surrender more money over the past 15 years that I every dare admit.

I began collecting vintage crystals about 12 years ago and had stashed them away for future projects or for petting and drooling, not necessarily in that order.

When one day I began to notice the crystals had taken over an entire corner of the room ,then they slowly began to creep out and to take up more and more space. In a attempt at order and placing them in containers.

First I began to place them on an excel spread sheet. Unfortunately after 3 weeks I realized I was lost in simply gazing at them playing with colors and getting lost in the glitter. I called my daughter (the engineer) in a moment of sanity and pleaded for some assistance.

On a quiet weekend we managed to alphabetize them by color then each color by size, type, shape and cost, From there I created sample boards and photographed each piece. The first photo is one of my sample boards

This was a labor of love as the crystals are very hard to phototgraph. The lens does not know where to focus (Ha ha so it isn't just me) They look the best when captured at just before dusk outside. I found out there is a window of about 45 minutes where the light is perfect. It was a race and took many nights.

Then I put them up for sale.

Turns out I had 96 different kinds of crystals!!!!!!

These are Swarovski crystals dating from the late 1890s to 1950's. They are in sizes, colors and shapes which are retired. I found them all over the world. They will be out at my next show at Art & Soul in Portland this October.

Here are several pairs of earrings I created from my collection. If you would like to see more you can check them out on my website http://www.wildhairstudio.com.