The Australian blogger behind The Likkle Girl Who Wurves Pwetty Things is really "a not-so-little girl who loves pretty things, in adult speak." She makes unusual one of a kind jewelry from hand stitched "gems" using her favorite Marimekko fabric scraps. Tongue in cheek, she "tries to shamelessly flog them off as precious stones".

The name of her little business is familiar to all. The Empress Dowager's New Jewels is a take on the Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the vain Emperor who was conned by two tailors into wearing invisible clothes so fine no one but the most exalted could see.

Her work is inspired from two sources. The technique of making the puffy style of patchwork comes from her grandmother who taught her how to make what she calls little shower caps which are then joined together. She calls them jiap-boh literally means "join cloth" in her native Teochew (Chinese) dialect. But another name for these is yo-yo. (See Heather Bailey's tutorial on how to make a yo-yo).

The second inspiration comes from the unusual Stolen Jewels collection by Mike and Maaike (see my past post on Pixel Jewelry). Likkle Girl was transfixed for a long time by the low resolution and highly pixelated photographs on leather jewelry of these two designers. The pictures were of famous jewelry by top jewelers like Cartier and Van Clef and Arpels. Now she translates her interest into her own unique line. Her shop is actually in the side bar of her blog, The Empress Dowager's New Jewels - one of the neatest and cost effective ways for any artisan with a small inventory. Lovely eye candy too!

Shown above is her Pink Tourmaline necklace . The creations below include her Cascade of Peridot, A Clump of Granite (which shows the other side of her "gems"), Cascading Tiger's Eye and Disc of Amethyst.


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