Saturday, April 30, 2016

Adventures in Jewelry-Making

If you read my Living Stones blog during my Drawing Near hiatus, you are familiar with the Word of the Year group that I belong to.  Each of our members has chosen a Word for the Year, and we are meeting face-to-face four times during 2016 to share our progress and our projects, and offer each other encouragement.  Every month in between meetings, we are emailing a partner, and responding to prompts that keep us thinking about our words; some of us are also keeping journals to record our experiences with our words.

During the month of March, we had a kind of "choose-your-own-adventure" prompt, with several project options.  One of the possibilities was to make our own piece of jewelry that featured our word in some way.  Though I've dabbled in a few jewelry-making projects (enough to have purchased many of the tools and supplies associated with jewelry-making...ha!), I don't consider jewelry my strong suit.  I figured that with a little help from Pinterest, though, I would be able to identify a project within my skill boundaries.

I scanned my Jewelry Projects Pinterest board, and came across a link to Adrianne's book page necklace project at Happy Hour Projects.  It sent me dashing to my supply stash, as I remembered certain creative supplies that I've been hoarding, unused, for probably eight years.
These are Inkssentials Memory Glass and Frames from Ranger.  The packaging itself gave me an idea for my project:  I would choose one of my vintage photos, cut out the definition of CONTENTMENT (my Word for the Year) from one of my dictionaries, and create a necklace that melded the ideas from Adrianne's post with the Ranger packaging.
My first step was to search my photo collection for faces that spoke "contentment" to me.  There were several strong contenders in my collection:
Even though I didn't end up using these, I just had to share these lovely, contented faces from the past.
In the end, I went in an entirely different direction.  I have two pages of "Transparent Winged Cuties" produced by ArtChix Studio (also purchased many, many years ago!), and I thought one of the figures would be perfect to use since the dictionary definition could then show through.
I did a simple bit of measuring, cutting, and layering between the glass slides before popping the whole thing into the frame, creating the main part of my contentment-themed necklace.  My next step was to follow Adrianne's directions for adding a "hope" charm and a bead at the top.
Sweet, don't you think?

To read more about our April Word for the Year meet-up, you can visit my Living Stones blog post here!

I enjoyed this project so much, and had all the tools and materials out and ready, so I made one additional necklace with a vintage photo.
Meet Gertrude and Curt.  I didn't make those names up!  The names were written on the back of the photo, and I was able to use them on the backside of this pendant:
To embellish this necklace I used a bead and a "bliss" charm that reflected the happy faces of young love so many decades ago!

If I manage to find more of these frames and glass, I could imagine making many, many more pendants from my collection of vintage photos.

What do you think?  What materials from your stash would make their way onto your pendants?

9 comments:

Cappuccinoandartjournal.blogspot.com said...

Lovely! The necklace is great. What a nice project....

Denise said...

You're so multi-talented, Andria! I have Memory Glass and Frames tucked away somewhere if you need more! (I'm in Springfield and met you at my polymer class at Tyler Arboretum.)

Andria said...

Hi Denise! I couldn't find your email address to respond to your comment directly. Thanks for stopping by. I was just looking at the polymer clay charms I made in your class; what fun that was! It would be fun to reconnect, and if you have some Memory Glass items you'd like to unload, I would definitely be willing to take them off your hands! Feel free to email me sometime at aleakaskey@yahoo.com.

yanmaneee said...

michael kors outlet
yeezy 500
jordan shoes
golden goose sneakers
yeezy boost 350 v2
michael kors handbags
christian louboutin shoes
supreme clothing
kevin durant shoes
yeezys

truongmuunghenhan said...

Thanks for sharing, nice post! Post really provice useful information!

An Thái Sơn chuyên võng điện máy đưa võng hay võng điện cho bé và chia sẻ kinh nghiệm giúp quý khách biết cục điện đưa võng giá bao nhiêu cũng như máy đưa võng loại nào tốt nhất cho giấc ngủ của bé.

yanmaneee said...

yeezy outlet boost
jordan shoes
moncler outlet
off white hoodie
cheap jordans
goyard handbags
steph curry shoes
birkin bag
nike epic react
off white clothing

Anonymous said...

Discover More more tips here look at this site Hermes Dolabuy moved here Valentino Dolabuy

Anonymous said...

e2i45i8d47 p7y48i6m44 r7j23q9j57 u1m06i1h46 y6y25p7e04 x6a94e6l05

Anonymous said...

goyard bag
gap yeezy
cheap jordans
kd 14
Travis Scott Jordan
bape outlet
kyrie 9
kobe byrant shoes
palm angels hoodie
yeezy boost 700