Another Custom Order: Heart Defect Necklace

Tonight I’m bringing you a peek at another custom order I did a few months back.  Forgive my gushing, but my customers are so creative.  I am fascinated with the cool ideas they bring to me.  I’m honored to help make those ideas a reality by creating a completely one of a kind, memorable piece of wearable art.

A woman had emailed me about making a special necklace to honor her young son, who has a very rare congenital heart defect called a vascular ring of the right aortic arch.  The heart’s vascular ring pinches the trachea and esophagus which can inhibit breathing and swallowing.  I understand it’s very rare, with only 1 in 100,000 people suffering from this diagnosis.  Starting with my classic anatomically correct heart, this is what we came up with together.

I don’t know much about anatomy, so it was quite a challenge to match the medical pictures I had found while minding the physical properties and limitations of polymer clay.  Making this necklace also reminded me, yet again, how brilliant and miraculous our bodies are.  At any given moment our bodies are carrying out thousands (millions?) of mind-boggling and invisible processes to keep us alive, and yet we often take this for granted.

To my delight my customer loved it, and I hear her son’s pulmonologist got a kick out of it as well, LOL!  Believe it or not this isn’t my first heart defect piece.  I am glad that this unusual but lovely little niche found me!

Thanks for reading,

~ Allison ~