Mother's Pendant Necklace

So, earlier today, I posted about how cute this necklace would be as a Mother's necklace. I had a little "free time" today after helping at school (2nd grade math games), just enough to construct this lovely heart pendant for my sister, Kim. Her birthday is coming up and I love to surprise her. This is the same heart pattern that I used for Zoe's Valentine pendant, but I hammered in J&K (for Kim and her husband, John), and the names of her 4 smashing boys: Tyler, Jaron, Cameron, and McKaden. I distressed this one a little bit more and attached a riveted bail. 100% handcrafted, aged, and polished. This one is about 26" long and can be layered with a favorite necklace (recognize that labradorite? I can't stop wearing it . . .) I used a snippet from the same silk ribbon I got in Tucson 2 years ago and Voila! Happy Birthday Kim!

Valentine Necklaces

This year for Valentine's Day I made gorgeous heart pendants. The large one is for Zoe and the small one is for Zalea. Zalea's is about 5/8" and the back says "love you." Zoe's is about 2" wide by 2 1/4" tall and I tied it with a snippit of silk ribbon (from Tucson) to match her outfit. It slides on a 24" ball chain. 100% handcrafted, aged and polished by hand for an antique look. The stamping is from the last line of ee cumming's poem, "my father moved through dooms of love" and it reads "LOVE is the WHOLE and more than ALL." The girls got these lovely necklaces and what did Enzo want? Milk chocolate.

I have been thinking that this large heart pendant would make a great mother's necklace. It would be fun to put your kids names all over it. I will have to play around with that idea a little bit. Watch for further posts . . .

Eddie Vedder

I may as well just admit it . . . I am hopelessly in love with Eddie Vedder. He was the inspiration for this latest pendant, RISE. Or, actually the song is the inspiration. It is one of my very favorites. He is just simply amazing. Of course, the word "hopeless" is key to the infatuation since Eddie Vedder doesn't even know that I exist. Dave has no worries about me actually running away with him. I'll just watch You Tube clips when I need my fix, and get back to work.

The construction of the pendant went pretty well until I tried to solder on the ring at the top to attach a chain to. That little part took several tries (and an extra hour or two). I finally realized that the pieces of silver just didn't have enough surface contact. Once I formed a new loop and propped it up the soldering went as well as could be expected. The cabochon is a Red Picasso Jasper from an artist on Etsy. It has a fabulous brush of green on the top and it looks splendid with this faceted garnet wrapped chain, don't you think?

Adventures In Metalsmithing - OR - The Grass Is Green Enough Where I Stand!

Here's another lovely experiment. I would love to say that creating this piece was a joy, super easy and fun. Anything but! It was tough! I worked on this one on and off for 2 whole days! At one point, I just had to walk away from it. I ruined 3 pieces of bezel wire! And to top it all off, my bezel wire slipped just slightly while I was soldering the pieces together so the final stone lays crooked! All the same, I love it! This is a gorgeous "green sea sediment jasper" that I purchased from a lovely artist on Etsy about a year ago. The colors are exquisite! Just looking at it conjures up feelings of green, spring, meadows, newness and growth. I couldn't find an adequate quote for the back, so I filled in the space with words that say "green" to me.

I learned a lot while making this piece. The whole time, I was using proper techniques, I just couldn't get it hot enough from beneath for the solder to flow in the right direction (it kept going up). I finally brought out my plummer's torch and that did the trick. One of these days, I will have proper tools, but in the meantime, I am loving the challenge of making do with what I have. That's a lesson for life if I ever had one!

Labradorite Pendant Necklace

How I love a good experiment! This is one of the 5 Labradorite cabs I purchased at the Costa Mesa show a few months back. I have dreamed about these stones ever since I bought them, and finally made the time to bust out my soldering equipment and and do something with them. I'm a little rusty, and I don't quite have the proper tools, but I'm pleased as punch at my first pendant. This is a high dome cab with an amazing flash, gorgeous color! I am just in love with this stone, and this necklace seems to match just about everything I wear. I am eager to try another setting. I can only get better the more I try! By the way, I had a lot of fun trying to take the photo of me in the mirror. I was laughing so hard for some of the shots, they're just too silly to post.