Private Jewelry Collection

I will be adding a section to showcase items I have created for friends and family outside of my Etsy online shop. I welcome custom orders - if you see anything here that catches your eye, just contact me and we can work it out!

So be sure to check back often for newest postings.

Lapis Jewelry:

When one of my closest friends knew of my growing interest in jewelry making, she asked that I look at some of her old jewelry to see what could be done to re-style of revamp them to make it them wearable again. This was a great opportunity for me to practice jewelry techniques. The first item was a necklace strung lapis chips, a large lapis pendant stone and some unknown metal nuggets. The stringing material had broken and had come undone.

My first task was to design how to use the chips and metal nuggets... Nancy and I decided we should make several pieces of jewelry, not just have one single re-styled item. Nancy could then have several pieces to pass on to her children.

It took me quite a few days to dream up ideas and show Nancy different techniques and material to add to the original materials. We finally decided to make 2 necklaces of similar style but not the same. I ended up adding clear crystal glass chips, fresh water pearls, clear seed beads and cobalt blue round beads. I replaced the original spring clasp with a pewter flower toggle set I found at Panopolie. (BTW - we found that the metal nuggets were silver when I took one of them to a "gold buying" jewelry store).










Then after I learned how to wire sculpt stone pendants and cabochons at an Ornamentea class, I then attempted to complete a setting for Nancy's lapis stone pendant. This would be my 2nd attempt at working with sterling square and half-round wires - the first was in that class. The pendant was large and perfectly shaped - it actually was quite a bit easier to wrap than the piece I did in the class.