Surinder Marbha (All about Henna)

Mehndi by Surinder Marbha allabouthenna.blogspot.com/

Looking at mehndi designs by Surinder Marbha is Intriguing I can spend hours just gazing at her mehndi designs.This seahorse pattern really facinates me,the way its been stylised but you can still see the creature.I know I want to make that seahorse real but I dont know what piece of jewellery should I turn it into.Maybe I should make it and then see what I can do with it.

Below is my design and process of creating a mehndi sea horse.I used silver and 18ct yellow gold wire to create this sea horse.I think the fun part of making jewellery based on mehndi is that they all dont need to be perfect and accurate,it looks hand-applied and hand-made.I bent my wires and swirls with caution although I wanted it to look hand-made, I did not want it to look untidy.I really took pride in soldering,tried not to melt anything,but unfortuatley I did melt a few wires along the way.

By this stage I was tired working with the sea horse I forgot why I wanted to make it in the first place.I feel as though I wasted so much time and effort just to chuck the idea away,I want to start something new im not enjoying this anymore.I thought it will work out according to this idea I had in my mind and when i saw things were falling apart I knew this was not going to work. I still have my sea horse somewhere in my bench locker,maybe I will get inspired in the future to make something off it. For now I just think.....gosh I wasted all that 18ct gold wire,now I would probably need to send this for refining.

Surinder Marbha (All about Henna)

http://www.allabouthenna.com/

mehndi by Surinder Marbha from All about Henna

 Surinder Marbha is born and bought up in Mumbai, India, Surinder has been doing henna for as long as she remembers! She is also the founder of All About Henna and initially started as offering henna services from her home. She wanted to share her love of henna to more permanent and long term use for her customers and started making henna decorated candles for her friends and family. The encouragement she received was pretty much the birth of All About Henna. Now, she not just offers henna body art services, but also designed this website and pretty much most of the items available in our online store. Her other hobbies are painting, reading and loves music. She has a full time career in advertising and also serves as a Board member of ThinkIndia Foundation, where she designs & develops props for their broadway style productions.

below is my jewellery designs based on her mendhi patterns

Bridal Head piece

bridal head piece

I started off by making test pieces and prototypes to see how the design would work, I cut 1mm thick wires and melted the ends into balls,cut pieces,shaped them, arranged them and then soldered.

 made 0,7mm wire and cut wire10mm long and melted the wire ends into balls and then bent them into "V" shapes so that they can be soldered onto the frame.

 Now the stone needs somw sort of setting that goes with the design but the beauty of the stone must be visible I didnt want to make a bezel setting for that reason,so I think claws in each grove of the stone will be functional and hold the stone in place securley.



bridal head piece

I sketched ideas and designed around the star stone (cubic zirconia) .This is my design that still needs to be developed but just an idea of what I have in mind.Im not sure if it will set on the head like the way I designed it to look.

Bridal head piece

The head jewel should be the focal point however it must not over-power the face of the bride, in other words I dont want to make it too big or too small because it will get lost with the brides image.If a hindu bride is going to wear it, it must sit over the forehead but just above the tikka/bindhi (forehead decoration dots). If a western bride uses it,she can wear it lower.Therefore it must be adjustable,musnt move easily,must be held in place by some sort of chain that will hook onto hair,or if the bride is wearing a tiara ,it can be hooked to the tiara. Im thinking of using 3 to 5 strands of chain to hook to the hair so its weight is balanced.
The focal point must be contemporary,maybe a flower,maybe including a gemstone or stone settings.

I have a stone that is shaped like a snow flake. I would like to incorporate it in my head piece,however it is not the colour I would of liked to use. It is crystal clear with irridecense.I would like to incorporate the use of colour,maybe red with a mixture of other tones if I happen to use it.

green exhibition

I had problems attaching my cast elements onto the inner sleeve.I tried firstly by sweat soldering the pieces onto each other,however that failed because the cast elements when heated,had a nature of pulling away from the metal it was lying onto so I thought if I rivet certain areas and then solder it would still keep the pieces together so they do not pull apart.I wasn't successful yet again,the solder was only running on the inner sleeve and the branches were melting.

I bent up my bangle thinking maybe if I forged the branches according to the curve of the bangle then it would be easy to push down the branches using my fingers then solder.As I was hammering the elements and inner sleeve into a cuff I noticed that the elements were embedding themselves into the metal and then I thought i would be a better idea to fuse them together so that they no longer look like they placed one on-top of the other but that they look like they belong together.

 

I blackened the metal and glass brushed the bangle so that the blackened areas are in certain places.and used a burnishing sort of tool to remove the edges of the bangle so that it isn't sharp and painful to put on the arm.