Mother's Gems

When my mother died several years ago, she had a collection of vintage jewelry from different parts of the world, places where she had lived while she was a US Air Force wife. I loved one of the pieces, a Y-necklace, because of the deep rich blue coloring in the beads. The brass settings had decomposed and parts of the necklace had fallen apart. I salvaged most of the beads, not knowing what they were or what they were made of. After washing and drying them, I kept those beads in a drawer not knowing what to do with them - I didn't want to trash them or give them away. So they sat for several years.

As I started making jewelry, I re-visited the beads, thinking "what should I do with these? What can I make with them? What are they? Are they worth it?" There were large and small carved rose beads, tubular beads, small round beads and a single pendant.




I finally decided that I wanted to make a necklace. I shopped at a local bead store, Beadazzled, and found some very nice vintage glass beads, mostly from Germany, in coordinating colors and found more of the smaller carved rose beads.








There were enough beads to make the necklace pictured here and a pair of earrings with the 2 remaining small rose beads.

The remaining pendant was put on hold until I took a class on setting cabochons at Ornamentea. This final piece is the result of that class.