A few weeks back, Moriah Betterly of Blu Mudd issued a challenge on her facebook page. She makes wonderful ceramic pendants. She was willing to send those that wanted to play one of her pendants. In exchange we had to design a necklace with it. I love her pendants, so I signed up immediately. As usual, life has gotten in the way. But I think I finally got it finished the way I want and like it. These are the pendants she sent out. Aren't they great?
I simply asked for something in reds/burgundy, NOT blues. LOL And as usual, I forgot to take a picture of the one I received before I started.
I knew I wanted to make my own bale from wire. So I took some 16 gauge copper wire, cut it, filed it, hammered the ends and the center, punched a hole and Voila! I had a bale for my lovely pendant. I also knew I wanted it to be really rustic. It just seemed to fit the shape, design and color. So I went through my leather strips, went to Hobby Lobby to get some more colors that I envisioned and set to town making links. This turned into WAY more work than I anticipated. I cut each strip of leather, tied each strip into knots, punched 2 holes in each strip (used my metal punch as I didn't have any leather punches or needles that would go through the leather). Now, how do I attach each leather link? I had to hand wrap/create copper links in every single hole in each leather link. I figured I would need 6 leather links on each side of the necklace. So I cut out 12 leather links, punched 24 holes, wire-wrapped 24 wire links and Guess What! I only needed 3 leather links on each side because I also wanted to make some copper wire tornado beads for in between each leather link. Talk about tired hands from all that leather and wire work. And now I have double the links I needed. Don't worry, they're being used. It's just not done yet. Now my dilemma was, how do I attach all the leather links to the bale? Out come the leather and the metal punch again. So, I've got 2 small pieces of leather cut and punched. They run through my copper jump ring and I start wire-wrapping AGAIN! (Oh, and by the way, I also hand made ALL the copper jump rings as I didn't have any available. And I had to make the copper links to run through my copper tornado beads to be able to attach them in between the leather links. Are we seeing a picture here?) I also hand crafted my clasp. It's a simple Figure 8 and S hook clasp as I didn't want to take away from the rest of the necklace and the Ceramic pendant. The reveal goes up tonight and the voting starts tomorrow on Blu Mudd Facebook page. So what do you think of my Rustic Leather Garden necklace? Did I do the pendant justice? Don't forget to go vote. I may be keeping this one for myself.
Closeup of the focal and bale
Closeup of the Copper wire tornado beads and leather links
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2 comments:
Great piece! I can tell you did a heap of hand work on this. Love the rustic look. It goes very well with the pendant!!!! I didn't think I'd like the red but I really do!
I like like the bail; thanks for giving a close-up of that because I think the details get lost in the over all pic.
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