Answer? Mother Eagle MINI mini’s of course!

So it has been on my mind for a while that I’d like to slightly diversify my product range to include items not only jewellery and art but also offer a more ‘affordable’ product too (I use inverted commas here as long time readers will know my stand on pricing properly and I don’t consider my work to be expensive, however £99 is not an impulse buy for most people).

So after the new collection launch (which was super successful with 3 pieces selling out within the first week!) I felt the winter chill and with it came the spark of motivation and inspiration. For me, as an artist who spends a lot of time working out my costs and prices, I knew that part of the solution to creating something hitting a lower price range was in reducing costs, but mainly in reducing the huge amount of time that goes into the jewellery.

I was pretty clear how I was going to do this: Covered buttons.

I got myself a little gadget and the metal blanks in 2 sizes – 29mm and 23mm diameter – then took up the challenge: I have to keep my Mother Eagle quality, just reduce size and increase speed. Can I do it?!

First I took a selection of my fave designs and digitally reduced the sizes. Then I transferred 5 onto some fabric and got going with the Heart:

I’ll tell you where I got my classy manicure later.

I can cover the entire thing with my index finger! Here’s how it is in comparison:

I think about 1 third smaller. Let’s be clear – NO FALL IN QUALITY; I used exactly the same techniques as for the larger sizes, only the size is different.

I bet you can’t guess which one took the longest? The Skull! Weird. It took twice the time so will have to have a rethink how I can make it quicker. Just a lot of dense filling  really.

There you have it. And making them into buttons was shockingly simple and fast.

What I learnt was this is the smallest I can pretty much go but I can also adapt these into BADGES and HAIR CLIPS! CAN YOU CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT? And these are simple modifications that I can add to them to order.

I still have the 23mm ones to do and I’ll share them with you at the weekend, along with how you can buy these prototypes for a special price.

Do tell me what you think.