How Rebecca Noel Designs Turns Real Flowers Into Handmade Jewelry

Rebecca Loomis’ crafting origin story is a familiar one. Her love for making things began as a simple hobby, working alongside her siblings and mother on various art projects. When she was younger, she worked part time at bead stores and even participated in a metalsmithing class during high school that solidified her love for crafting jewelry.

In 2013, Loomis moved from her hometown of Cincinnati to Vancouver, Washington. She worked various jobs but tried to dedicate time each week to creating jewelry she would sell to friends or at a few local maker events each month. During those eight years in the Pacific Northwest, she began noticing and finding inspiration in the plants of the region.

“[I became] interested in … these flowers or shrubs that I’ve never seen before,” Loomis recalls. “It was really fun to start incorporating some of that into my jewelry.”

In June 2021, Loomis returned to Cincinnati to be closer to family and subsequently turned her jewelry-making business, Rebecca Noel Designs, into a full-time operation. For each piece of jewelry, she begins by drying her own flowers, which are foraged, grown or bought from a local shop. After applying a thin layer of resin to the bezel that serves as the base of her creations, she uses tweezers, toothpicks and an X-Acto knife to pick up, cut and arrange the plants into a design. She then adds a second layer of resin and puts the pieces in plastic cases to let the resin set. 

Her mini botanical necklaces are dainty in size and work as everyday jewelry pieces. Loomis says she wants to create custom pieces using customers’ wedding or funeral flowers and has dreams of a birth-flower line.

“It’s almost like a mindfulness practice, just seeing what’s around you,” Loomis says. “It becomes sort of a hobby where you’re trying to identify [plants], so having that translate into jewelry pieces has been really cool and rewarding.” 

For more information, visit rebeccanoeldesigns.com.

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