Amethyst teardrop pendant

Another simple wirework pendant, done in amethyst and silver.

 

Name:  N/A

Price: $15

Length:  2 inches tall including bail x approx. 1 inch wide

Lapis Lazuli pendant

Simple lapis lazuli rectangular pendant wrapped with tarnish-resistant wire.

 

Name:  N/A

Price:  $15

Length:  Pendant is 2 inches tall (including bail) x approx. .5 inch wide

Bound Heart necklace

Back when I first started making jewelry as a kid, in part thanks to my Dad making special "date" trips to my favoritest store in the whole wide world with me, I wanted to make my Mom a necklace.  So we went, and I picked out a rhodonite heart bead and several pink lepidolite rounds for an illusion necklace.  I strung it (with Dad's help and a lot of frustration) on some poor-quality, very weak gold-colored wire, and was never happy with it, but Mom kept it nonetheless though she never wore it.  About two years ago, I found it in her jewelry culls to be thrown away, so I took it to redo.  It sat in my bead box until last night, when I finally came up with a plan to use it and some of the remaining rhodonite rounds I got for her opera-length necklace from this fall.
I wanted to do something fun and creative, so I used silver wire and wrapped both ends (it had two holes for stringing I utilized) to make it a link pendant, then I strung the rest of the necklace off-center so the heart would stand upright when worn.  This was the result.
I used silver wire, Beadalon beading wire, rhodonite, blackstone, and a lot of silver.

 

Name:  Bound Heart

Price:  $25

Length:  just over 20 inches

Amethyst Blossom Vine pendant

This is what I do on quiet, rainy Friday evenings since I'm not dating.  I was half-watching a Ninja Gaiden walkthrough, letting my hands tease ideas from my brain for the pendants I have lying around.  Throw in a batch of homemade popcorn, a glass of milk, and a cat for company and, well, this was the result.
This pendant is a nice piece of amethyst, wrapped with a tarnish-resistant brass wire vine and Swarovski bicone "buds", accompanied by pressed glass leaves.  I didn't follow a guide, or any photo for inspiration, just let it tell me what it wanted to be.

 

Name:  Amethyst Blossom Vine pendant

Price:  $25

Length:  pendant is approx. 2 inches by 1 inch, including bail

Springtime Murano

What a battle to get this done!  I bought this really nice green, silver, and gold Murano leaf pendant years ago (another "finally done" project!), and it's been sitting in my bead box ever since.  I've tried a variety of techniques with it, but none worked until I decided to simply multi-strand it using a mix of gold, brown, and green.
First I fought to get all five strands the same beaded length.  That done, I then battled to get the bead cone and crimp cover on one end; the holes were too small for five steel strands, even at the thin diameter I use.  Got one side set, and started on the other, wrestled for fifteen minutes, then discovered the pendant hole was just too small for the widest part of the cone to go through.  Being glass, I didn't want to force the issue (a good hard yank might've done it).  So I had to undo 15 minutes of work by pulling the cone and crimp cover back off, stringing the pendant, then another 15 minutes to put them back on.
All figured, this took two days to do.
Note: the colors in the pendant look washed out in the photo, but the greens and golds match in both pendant an beads.

 

Name:  Springtime Murano

Price:  $30 (reason: time and effort mostly; Murano foiled glass isn't entirely cheap, either)

Length:  about 20 inches; pendant is 2.5 inches tall

Shades of Gray

I've had this Crazy Lace Agate donut pendant for even longer than my Dragon and Phoenix.  I remember purchasing it when I was housesitting for my sister one fall.  I originally braided some thread and just wore it around my neck that way, but I was never really happy with it.  So I set it asid in my bead box for years, never quite finding anything that really worked with it.  Finally, one of the sites I use for supplies got in some rounds that matched it (a lot of crazy lace agate has a brown cast to it, but my donut is entirely shades of gray), so I bought a strand thinking it was 16" like most strands are and some gunmetal gray wire.  Turns out the strand of beads was only 8" so I had to get even more creative with my wirework for the necklace to be a decent length.  I chose the link style I made because it looked vaguely Celtic.  I used up my remaining silver wire for contrast, and the rest is done in the gunmetal.  Also made my first S-shaped clasp.  Very different from what I usually do, but I really like it.



Name:  Shades of Gray

Price: $40 (reason: wirework)

Length:  18 inches

Misaligned Malachite

Perfectionist that I am, I'm debating redoing the interior strand so the beads line up with the voids on the outer strand of this necklace.  Malachite is a rather expensive stone to get good quality, so I've been collecting it over a couple of years for a project and last night I finally got the inspiration of what it would look like.  I handmade the bail for the donut, and carefully measured where each beaded section would be on the two strands, then crimped them in place.  I accented just a little with some silver.  I made a "visible" illusion necklace, since that seems to be a growing fad--instead of clear fishing line, I used the usual protected steel cable I use for stringing.

 

Name:  Misaligned Malachite

Price: $40 (reason: malachite prices)

Length: outer strand 21 inches, inner about 19 inches

The Dragon and the Phoenix

I have had this dragon and phoenix pendant for years now, but never found stone that went well enough with it to make a necklace from it until two weeks ago.  The seller I bought it from claimed it was "multicolor jade" but when I got it the patterning of the stone is clearly multicolor moss agate.  I went to my favorite store looking for something to go with it and had almost given up when one of the girls working there got an idea and brought out some very flawed sodalite rounds.  Given the pendant is mostly green and brown I was rather skeptical about using the blue, but it worked when we held them up to each other. There was enough brown flaw in the stones to ease the blue tinge, unlike any of the green we'd tried.  I discovered when I got home that I hadn't actually purchased sodalite, but the strand I'd chosen (which I chose because it had a lot more of the brown in it instead of the vivid white-lined blue common to the stone) was actually sapphire.  I matched it with some antique copper to draw out the brown.
I absolutely love the way it turned out.  Glad this is now a finished piece in my personal collection!

 

Name:  Dragon and Phoenix

Price:  $20 (personal collection; not for sale!)

Length: 16 inches

Spring Fling

Made this quick and easy ribbon-strung necklace the other day just for the heck of it since I felt "springy".  Hand dyed silk ribbon, etched shell pendant, and a brass jump ring.

 

Name:  Spring Fling

Price:  $30

Length: adjustable; on a three-foot ribbon

The Zebra Fairy

So yesterday afternoon, accompanied by three companions, I made a trip home to my all time favorite store and got some supplies to both start new projects, and finish some long-standing ones.  I was browsing through the different stone pendants and came across this beauty, labeled "Green Zebra Jasper."  I've never heard of Green Zebra Jasper, and the Zebra Jaspers I have seen don't have a metallic quality to the stripes.  This is one of the prettiest pieces of stone I've come across in a long time.  I wanted it to stand on its own, so picked out a soft green fairy ribbon to complement it, and attached it with a triangular sterling silver jump ring.  Both pendant and ribbon were a bit pricey, but I think the images show it was well worth it!  I am strongly debating keeping this in my personal collection.

 

Name: Zebra Fairy

Price:  $20

Length:  40 inch ribbon; pendant is 2 inches x 1.5 inches

Silver Skies Murano pendant

I've had this Murano glass pendant for years, trying to figure out just what to do with it.  Finally decided just to toy around with it and this was the result.  Also made matching earrings (next post).  This is a lot more silver than I usually use!

 

 

Name:  Silver Skies

Price:  $30; $35 for set (with earrings)

Length:  24 inches

Tina's Tiger Eye Pendant

Last November, a friend of mine from work joined me in a jaunt to one of my favorite places.  She'd never been to Von's, and I'd been raving about it.  She picked out a nice piece of red tiger eye, and asked if I could turn it into a pendant like I did the dyed-pink quartz she'd brought me.  I said sure, but that it would take me a while to come up with something to do with it.
Three months later...
After sifting through tons of wire-wrapped tumbled stone pictures, ideas, and resorting to watching some tutorial videos, this is what we wound up with.

 

Name: N/A

Price: $15 (approx.; it depends on size of stone, how much and what kind of wire used)

Length: semi-large tumbled stone

Roses in Stone necklace

I posted a couple of weeks ago in request for aid for a friend hit by the tornadoes that ripped through Illinois.  An update: she and her elderly mother have found a place to live close to work, and the money several of us raised has helped her a lot.
I wanted to do something special for her for Christmas since she is a good friend, so I made this necklace out of Indian agate and gold metal seed beads.  I sort of mimicked it after the quilt my Mom (fiberobsession here on BlogSpot) donated to her, as my friend had said the colors were wonderful.

 

Name:  Roses in Stone

Price:  $25

Length: 22 inches

Fluorite Ginko necklace

With Christmas coming up and being short on funds, I sat down with a very tight budget and mapped out who I needed to get gifts for, and how much I could invest.  One of the people on that list is my "Mom away from home."  She sort of adopted me when I moved and didn't know anyone last spring.  I wanted to do something special for her for Christmas, as it's been a wild year.
She loves purple, and really liked my Purple Orchid necklace, a pendant the likes of which I haven't seen since I bought that one back before I was in college.  So I searched for probably a week on various sites and stores until I found this fluorite ginko-leaf pendant, which was as close a design as I could get to the orchid other than big honking roses.  I found some nice round-edged rondelles to go with it, also fluorite, from the same dealer (a guy I've dealt with many times and trust), and this was the result.  I got a set of 3 pendants (this is one of the two small ones); the big one was the purple I wanted, but far too big.

 

Name:  Ginko

Price:  $25

Length:  20 inches

Seraphinite donut choker

When I first discovered seraphinite, it was exceedingly rare and really expensive to get.  I happened upon a beautiful donut pendant (a lot larger than I'd originally anticipated) on Lima Beads, and it was within my price range, so I bought it.  It sat around quite a while because I couldn't decide what to do with it.  I finally just knotted it onto pleather cord and attached a leaf clasp to it and wore it as a choker.  I always intended to redo it into something nicer, but I always seem to wear it this way instead.
Seraphinite is a dark green stone with metallic silver feathering that seems to shimmer when it catches the light.  I took a picture of it in my hand to show you just how big it is.

 

Name: Seraphinite donut necklace

Price:  $15 (reason: price of seraphinite; personal collection)

Length: about 16 inches; pendant I believe is about 50mm across

Bronze Lily off-center necklace

I like to do funky things for my sister as presents.  Over the weekend I went to my favorite bead store, looking specifically for something cool to use for a necklace for my sister for Christmas.  When I found these magnesite rondelles shot through with pyrite, I knew they were perfect.  The "pendant" was a no-brainer too--it's actually half of a toggle clasp!  I had originally planned to just bead the necklace and tell her the clasp was actually the focal, to wear it off-center, but the more I worked on it, the more I needed it to be crazier.  So I eliminated the bar part of the clasp and cut apart some chain I'd bought a couple of months ago, and voila!  Now the lily really is an off-center pendant.
I love the way the lily complements the pyrite in the stones, and how even the bronzy-and-black chain worked with the whole thing.  Even my brighter gold-filled findings seemed to work okay (didn't have the brass / bronze color).

 

Name:  Bronze Lily

Price:  $35 (reason: complexity, range of materials, time involved)

Length:  24.5inches, including extender

Jill's Blues trade necklace

Another lady I know from work, when she found out I make jewelry, came to me about the same time the I got the tumbled quartz to work with.  She'd gotten a free green necklace along with a purchase from somewhere, which was broken, and they were sending her a second.  Problem was, she doesn't like green.  So she proposed a trade--both necklaces, to be worn or used for spare parts, in exchange for something blue.  I showed her what little blue I had (most has been used up on various projects), and she liked the blue impression jasper chips--also called sea sediment jasper or variscite.  I had pendants on the way that were the same color, so I wound up combining them with the chips, a few baby bellflowers, a few bicones, and some silver off the broken necklace.
It's really hard to get good pictures when it's dark out, and hard to show the extreme variety of the stones.

 

Name: N/A

Estimated Cost: $30 (traded to Jill S.)

Length:  about 18 inches

Tina's Tumbled Quartz Pendant

About three weeks ago now, one of the ladies I work with approached me with a challenge--she'd gotten a "rose quartz" tumbled stone, and wanted to know if I could wire-wrap it into a pendant.  I had to break it to her that the stone isn't rose quartz; someone tried to dye it to look that way, even possibly "cherry" quartz.  I also told her I wasn't confident in my wire skills yet, but I'd do my best.
I've been mulling over what exactly to do; there's no drilled hole and the stone is tumbled to polish it, so it's not an even surface.  I wound up using a caging technique out of one of the books I've got, then attaching a jump ring for a necklace chain to the top.  Hopefully it will hold up; I used 20-gague wire so it'll be sturdier, but we'll see.

Name: N/A

Price: $15

Length: stone is about 1 inch tall; chain is 16 inches plus extender for example

Metal Monarch necklace

Like I've said multiple times, I don't do a lot of chain or wirework.  I'm still learning the ropes with it, and not very confident yet.  Still, when I found this pendant at Wal-Mart, I knew I had to do something with it for my sister.  So it's stayed in my project box for quite a span while I tried to figure out just what kind of chain (or multiples) to use with it.  I had hoped to do several chains of different textures with it, but the attachment holes on the back were too tiny to support more than one, and I didn't have the supplies to sturdily attach more than one unless I wanted the attachment jump rings bent all out of shape or to wrench open.  So I settled for just one type, and think it turned out fairly well.



Name: Metal Monarch

Pricet: $20

Length: chain = 30 inches