Easy DIY Teapot Necklace--no skills required.

Today, I wanted to post a necklace I "made" over the weekend.  I put "made" in quotes because really, what I did was walk into the craft store in search of a storage container, meandered onto the beading section, saw an impossibly cute package of tea themed charms and bought them.

I suppose this would look terrific on a charm bracelet or something more complicated but all I did was buy a16 inch sterling silver chain. The simplest one.

That was it. I put the teapot on the chain and viola. The perfect necklace for me. Why? Because I drink a lot of tea. I love tea. Its my go to drink. There's a cute tea cup in this package. That may be necklace number two.

Perhaps next time you  are at the craft store you will walk over to the beading section, find a charm/pendant you like and put it on a simple chain. I saw some adorable Alice in Wonderland ones, I saw Acorns for Wendy lovers from Peter Pan, I saw hearts, turtles, fish, dragons, and so much more! 

What an incredibly inexpensive way to make custom gifts for your friends!

I feel guilty posting this as a DIY.  But maybe someone will make a necklace seeing this post and have that "AHA that's so easy I could totally do that" moment :)

Happy snowy Monday.

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An Elephant's Journey

Ametrine. I just found out this is a combination of amethyst and citrine--thus the purple/lavendar color to yellow.

This strand was so pretty with the purple and yellow ombré and I had this new ultra strong, no needle needed beading string to try. 

As the eye catching detail, I added this silver elephant. I have a thing for elephants. They bring good luck. I have a collection of them. It's better if the trunks are raised upward but regardless, elephants, in my mind, bring luck.

Sadly, the way I strung this necklace, the elephant  always showed its butt. No good. I needed to add a jump ring to make it lie flat like I forced it to do for this pic. So, knowing a this necklace had an ill positioned pendant, the editing began. 

First? The gemstones. The necklace was shortened to a bracelet. 

I like to mix green with purple. It's a thing I do. Not sure why. The bead that is on the silver circle is green, tho this photo is particularly dark.

What happened then, to the sweet, lucky elephant that kept showing its backside?

It jumped onto a crocheted necklace that I had just been working on, that was in need of a focal pendant.

A friend stopped by, saw the necklace and the elephant and took it home. She, apparently likes elephants too. :) 

Labradorite and Silver. No wait, Garnets...

I love the odd shapes of these awesome labradorites. I used silver wire with silver circles and wire wrapped the labradorites to look like this:

Looking at this photo now, I think this is lovely. Even looked great on:

But I guess I started over thinking it and started playing with it again and again. I swapped out the silver ovals for garnets and turned it into this: 

I eventually gave it to my son's teacher as an end of the year gift. Which is better? Silver or garnet? 

Rough Black Diamonds go from Earrings to Necklace in Redesign

Before and afters are so fun. Especially the photos. I have a hard time leaving my jewelry alone. If I have a piece that doesn't sell at a show or two, or I notice I'm not wearing at all, I start to change it up. Here are a few of such things.

1. The rough black diamond earrings.

I had a beautiful strand of sparkly black rough diamonds. I made them into hoops but I never ever wore them. 

So I turned it into a necklace. 

Which do you like better? I love the pink topaz with this dark and yet very sparkly chain. 

2. Next is this necklace I made as one of my first projects. Just labs and moonstones on a silver chain. 

It was classic, simple, and not selling. I added pearls and iolites for more variety and made the sections bigger. 

Finally I decided I didn't like the chain so I removed that and it ended up looking like this and was given as a gift.