I am so excited about these leafy hair decorations! This is the first (hopefully) of many. Larkin plans on making a whole line of leaf hairpins, each unique and modeled after actual individual leaves in our forest and surroundings.
Larkin hand-shaped and textured this oak leaf from sheet metal and wire. The wire base is bent and shaped into waves like a bobby pin for greater staying power.
This pin can be used alone for a small amount of hair (it will hold slightly more than a bobby pin and less than most barrettes) or added as decoration to a hair tie.
This is the leaf Larkin made in the Ringgold workshop and is solid 0.925 sterling silver. After lots of experimentation and frustration at home, it became clear that argentium just doesn't behave as well as sterling for these kinds of sculptural projects-- it gets brittle and tears and cracks very easily. While Larkin will continue to use argentium for some projects, they bit the bullet this week and placed an order for sterling that essentially meant replacing all the metal in their home workshop.