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JewelryClick on any of the pictures.
Every piece of jewelry is individually handcrafted personally by jo malik. There are no imported ready made pieces of jewelry from China or any other country and sold as handmade by me. Each and every piece is comprised of the highest quality materials available. .jpg)   The glass pendants are constructed of multiple layers of colored, opaque, translucent and dichroic glass, 24k gold and fine silver foil, all of which gives each piece the extraordinary range and depth of color unachievable any other way. After a design is conceived and sketched, each piece is cut and ground to insure a proper fit. It is then assembled and fired in a kiln at 1550 degrees in a process that can take up to twelve hours. After the first firing, it will be cold worked, additional cutting and grinding will be needed and more glass may be added to achieve the final desired look. It is then fired a second time, at a lower temperature to "fire polish" the edges. It is a painstaking process, with multiple steps that allow numerous opportunities for the project to go awry and leave a pile of unusable glass. However when it all works properly the results are stunning and worth every minute.
The metal jewelry is fine silver, sterling silver, 14k gold, genuine stones and hand fabricated by me.  All my designs are original and take hours of sketching and planning. No two  pieces are ever alike, similar but never the same. The “Crazy” series is hand engraved on every surface, with different sayings, inspirational quotes and relevant motto's inscribed. They are like my friends, each one seems to take on personality traits independent of what I may have conceived or planned. I don't decide what to engrave on them until they're finished. There are embellishments of 14k gold carefully placed to enhance the overall shape and design. There are several women in the "big ass" family. I cast them using the "lost wax" casting method. Which is to say, I hand carved a model from wax, which is then encased in a plaster type mixture and heated until the wax burns away. The vacant space is then filled with molten sterling silver and takes the place of the wax. To be able to make multiples of them, I made a rubber mold of the first lady I cast and then subsequently filled the mold with wax and start the whole process again. The big ass women pins and pendants came about because I have grown tired of seeing underfed, malnourished girls, held up as the ideal of the female form. They don't look healthy, and they don't look happy. I want both, health and happiness. |