Valentines Day
Happy 2012 everyone! Its been a while since our last update. First off we would like to thank everyone who came to our show at grand central terminal. It was a great season for us and really enjoyed meeting a lot of new customers as well as revisiting with friends from years past.
Its another great time of the year to shop karencurtis.com! In the last month we have made a few new products for that special valentine in your life. For the ladies we have a large selection of new and classic designs to browse, and find a match for that outfit you can’t find something to wear with. Send an email to info@karencurtis.com To receive a valentines special, like these earrings for $25! Or for the wine enthusiast in your life, new red and white wine stoppers! $45each or $145 for the set with the stand. www.karencurtis.com
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Valentines Day
Happy 2012 everyone! Its been a while since our last update. First off we would like to thank everyone who came to our show at grand central terminal. It was a great season for us and really enjoyed meeting a lot of new customers as well as revisiting with friends from years past.
Its another great time of the year to shop karencurtis.com! In the last month we have made a few new products for that special valentine in your life. For the ladies we have a large selection of new and classic designs to browse, and find a match for that outfit you can’t find something to wear with. Send an email to info@karencurtis.com To receive a valentines special, like these earrings for $25! Or for the wine enthusiast in your life, new red and white wine stoppers!
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Small business Saturday
Today is small business Saturday … Register yr Amex card… Spend $25 or more online or at our shop in grand central terminal ( open til 8pm ) and Amex will credit you $25 for supporting a small business . Shop today karencurtis.com or visit us at our boutique in Gct
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Everything is coming together for the 2011 holiday fair in grand central terminal! It is our most exciting time of the year. The debut of all the new work that has kept us busy all year-long. For us it is the starting line of the holidays…. bells ringing on the corners of the streets, decorations on all the street lamps, christmas lights on the trees, and the energy that comes with this time of year…. not to mention Santacon, one of our favorite days (check it out) http://nycsantacon.com . It is a time when we get to reunite with all of the people we have met year after year, grown to know and share in their lives and look forward to catching up on life. This is truly the most gratifying part of our show, if it wasn’t for the amazing support that we receive from all of our following it would be difficult to be as excited as we are for the next 2 months.
This year promises to be just as exciting for our customers! With a plethora of new designs including a brand new bridal collection, new line of sculptural art glass that we titled “spazzios” and chandeliers that are sure to stop the crowds! All this and some beautiful collections from prior years for anyone looking to put together a new set of colors they loved. It’s not just an opportunity to showcase our work, it’s the love we get from being part of our customers lives every holiday, and hearing about the new and exciting things that have happened to you since we last saw each other!
Booth from 2009
Well people, we are back on the bridge leading into the main concourse of Grand Central, a cozy little boutique where Aaron and I first met. Here’s to a great holiday season with lots of memories! See You Soon!
—–Karen and Aaron—–
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Time does keep escaping me and I realized I never shared more photos of my bridal jewelry and tiara’s… I have started updating my website…. And now have a BRIDAL collection online. The jewelry is not completed yet with detail pages for each piece so please forgive me… However, every piece you see in this section we will be debuting at the Grand Central Holiday Fair. So all you fellow New Yorkers, Tri-staters and anyone coming to New York during the Holiday season … Come visit our temporary boutique we will have for the holidays in GCT. It is a fabulous show! Come shop and try on some fabulous jewels.
I will write you more soon, as there is so much going on for us.
Right now I have to go back to designing a chandelier I’m working on and we have our beautiful hand blown wine-stoppers surrounding us as we prepare them for the show… Lots of goodies in the works. Will update you on the wine stoppers and chandeliers real soon!
In the meantime…. Enjoy the sneak peek of Bridal Elegance.
Karen Curtis' Princess Tiara
Bridal Layer Necklace by Karen Curtis
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Tags: Formal Wear, Jewellery, Jewelry, Shopping, Wedding, Wedding dress, Women
manhattan bride magazine
We are so excited to share with you our wedding!
Manhattan Bride Magazine just hit news stands and our wedding is featured! Check it out!
Weddings are so exciting! Designing my jewelry was so much fun! Photos of my jewelry and tiara coming real soon! Our photographer, Julia Skya of Jang Photography was wonderful … awaiting photos to share.
This has been an exciting month for us so far… we just got to see our article, we have photos coming soon and we even got to view our ceremony on video.
So many details to go into a wedding and so much fun to plan… I loved being our wedding planner! Will share more detail soon. And if you need any help with your wedding…. let us help make you sparkle.
Enjoy!
Karen
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Tags: Jewellery, karen curtis, Swarovski, swarovski crystal, Wedding, Wedding dress, Wedding planner, Weddings
Bridal Collection
Weddings, Weddings, and more weddings! This seems to be the trend of our summers for the past few years. This summer was no different, it all started with the highly anticipated royal wedding. I think it brought a real life fairy tale atmosphere to the entire globe. Everyone was glued to the media so they could be among the first to get a glimpse of what Kate was wearing.
The second wedding of the summer to be viral was Kim Kardashian’s. Once again the question on everyone’s mind was what will she wear, and how will she look. Another wedding that little girls everywhere dream of having.
In addition to these high-profile weddings I was busy planning my own big day!!! The only thing that we knew for sure was that we had the jewelry under control, it would be perfect!… keeping elements of my dress in mind it would be an amazing extension, a big statement without overpowering the dress and for me… the look wouldn’t be complete without a TIARA to finish my look.
Anyone who has planned a wedding knows that it is all about the details….. that being said we have decided to design a bridal collection that is exactly that, detail orientated. Each piece of jewelry is crafted using a beautiful assortment of Swarovski crystals and there is no shortage of sparkle with any of the collection. We use so many different faceted crystals, that the jewelry shines from every angle.
I have to give some of the credit to my friend Lilly. It was something she said to me early in the planning stages of my wedding. She said “Don’t skimp on how you look and what you wear because you are going to have to look at those photos for the rest of your life”. She was right! If you are not Kim Kardashian or Kate Middleton this will probably be one of your most documented. And your wedding is definitely your most special day, it’s all about you …. Photographers taking pictures of you from start to finish, everyone talking about how you look, your grand entrance being exactly that…. GRAND! You are the STAR!
All bridal jewelry can be custom-made to match whatever colors you want, but because white/clear is so neutral and elegant we will be displaying our designs in this palette with imagination being limitless! Enjoy!
glamorous V-Necklace
Heart Charm Bracelet
Elegant small hoop Earrings
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Jewelry Design part 2
Great week of designing jewelry. Karen and I stuck to 1 color combination all week-long, creating earrings, bracelets, and necklaces that all matched in color, but design-wise were slightly different. I believe its important to have these differences, they make it more interesting when paired together. Lets be honest, it’s the shine and the sparkle that attracts someone to look at what you are wearing. And when they do the fascination comes from the colors and shapes that are paired together, Whether it is diamonds and rubies, or like we are using Swarovski crystal, the elegance and the craftsmanship come from thought-out placement of the individual elements. After the actual colors choice of a piece, this would be the second most important aspect for designing a sophisticated piece of jewelry! The following image is a brand new charm bracelet that can better explain what I am describing. It is also a quick sneak peek of our spring 2012 and what’s to come this year from Karen Curtis!!!
The collection is meant to be dominated by the gold, honey, and amber colors that were selected, so here we brought in large transparent beads to stick out in the design of the bracelet. It sort of sets the tone for the overall look of the piece. Next we add in smaller beads to incorporate all of the colors. Notice the stack of two oval red beads which break up the cone-shaped grey, amber, and olive beads. Using our stacking method, and the pearl on the opposite side of the bracelet we add texture, different surfaces to each bead give us the opportunity to diversify the pattern. The entire bracelet is wire-wrapped, the metal is continuously woven into the next segment of metal. Wire-wrapping is difficult but is a beautiful way of assembling certain pieces of our collections.
This collection would look stunning with an any outfit that incorporates tan, grey, or other neutral colors. This could also be a beautiful and fun addition to summer-time carefree outfit with the dangling Swarovski crystals catching sunlight as you stroll down the beach. We look forward to showcasing this collection at this years holiday fair in grand central terminal! Enjoy your week, stay tuned for another weekly blog!!!!!!!!
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Tags: Bead, Crafts, Design, Jewellery, Jewelry, karen curtis, Necklace, Shopping, Swarovski
The trick to designing jewelry is to make your product fashion forward. This means that we are predicting the future trends in clothing and accessories so that the new jewelry you get from Karen Curtis is going to be a beautiful accent to your wardrobe. This doesn’t mean we want matchy-matchy, it means that we can add more color to your outfit by blending it to what you are wearing. One of the most popular collections that we made, for last year was titled “port side”, it was based on a nautical theme. Using navy blues, and chalk-white as the major components, while mixing in tan and champagne colors to help tie it in with everyday clothing such as khakis or a large neutral colored sun hat. See example below.
Now the first step we take is to put together a grouping of colored Swarovski Elements just to see how the colors look together. The amount of each color can be moderated by the size of the beads we use in a specific item, that being said lets take a look at a group of beads Karen put together that we are going to use for this years designs. 
The look is very natural. Mainly honey tones and adding accent colors that are darker then the amber tones will help to give “pop” to the piece. The shapes play a huge roll in the overall design. Smaller accents colors compliment the big, bold amber tones that are really going to define the piece.
Next week I will post the final product…. stay tuned!
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Just introducing KarenCurtis.com to the blogging scene. Our company is small…. consisting of a husband and wife team, myself (Aaron Niemczyk) and of course Karen Curtis. I thought it would be fun to let the world?/anyone who decides to follow us, in on the life of designing. Karen and I work on a number of projects for our company, but what I want to focus on is what we design from day to day. As of today all of our work in the glass blowing studio is done for the rest of the year, with the exception of custom orders, the new line of art glass is finished! Now we are in the beginning stages of jewelry design. We have an amazing inventory of Swarovski Crystal beads that have been begging to be put to use, so we are developing color schemes for different collections, all to be debuted at the grand central terminal’s holiday fair. Over the next few months I am going to post photos, maybe some videos, of the process and show some of the new and interesting combinations. It’s a process that evolves from 1 item to the next so I hope to capture it in the blog. Everything we use will be made with Swarovski Elements, some beads dating back to pre-1940, and all the metal is either sterling silver or gold-filled. Scattered-determination could describe the method, but I would prefer Artistically crafted.
ENJOY!
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Karen and Aaron
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