Redesigning Our Dahlias

In 2020, I added our sunflower and dahlia necklaces and magnets to the website. And while I am still very much in love with our sunflowers, the design of the dahlias became less favourable as time passed. I found myself hesitating to include them in our market setup and feeling less inclined to bring attention to them as a whole. By 2022, I had my heart set on an eventual redesign – it was only a matter of finding the time to do it between ongoing health complications. That was when the universe seemed to set the redesign in motion for me.

In April 2022, someone asked for a dahlia necklace, and I found I only had a handful of magnets left. It had been a long time since I made a dahlia – I couldn’t remember or find the colour recipes I had created. I wracked my brain and scoured my phone for the recipe that was long lost. I could only remember one of the polymer clay colours I used – which had since been discontinued and I had no more of. So, the only option was to redesign the dahlias I felt so bittersweet about. I spent some time finding inspiration from real dahlias and identifying the aspects of the original magnets that I disliked so much.

I adored the terracotta colour that I added to the sunflowers, but adding fuchsia to the dahlia’s petals didn’t have the same effect. I also felt our original design was far too flat – like a wilted flower. I wanted the new design to have more petals and more volume as a whole. I knew this would also give me additional space to work towards a more natural gradient.

I settled on six designs, then got to work creating the new colour recipes for each gradient. When I was satisfied with the colours, I got to work assembling the first blue dahlia. I felt a little bit out of place at first – it had been a long time since I had worked on any flower. But before long, I got back into the rhythm of making and placing the appropriately sized petals. The only complications I had was with the pink dahlias. When the time came for assembly, the colours felt so out of place. There was a lovely gradient between the first and second layer of petals, but the third layer was too different from the rest. It took a couple of attempts to identify the colour within the recipe that was causing the design to look so out of place, but when it was complete, the task was a piece of cake! Much like my first ever polymer clay creations, I still have a handful of our original dahlia designs for my own reflection. And now that the redesign is complete, I don’t feel nearly as much shame towards my original design. That design was created with my best efforts and this process has been a great example of improving a craft with practice and persistence.

This experience has certainly made me look at some of the other designs in the shop from long ago. I know there are some designs I was to revisit to improve and expand upon, and to write about again later. Thank you for reading about the process I took to redesign our dahlias! If you like my blog, be sure to subscribe join our Facebook Group to never miss a post!

Have a wonderful day,

Kimberley (they/them)

Accessories by Antoinette