Saturday, October 23, 2010

Just being sneaky.

This shall be a mere blip! of a post - just a quick mention of a sneaky little idea.  It's something super obvious, but I had a nice example on hand so I thought, what the heck, maybe it will be fresh for a few of you.

A nice gal of my acquaintance had a broken necklace of beautiful garnets, plus a cool Star of David that matched.


She asked me to restring the beads with the pendant included.  Instead of recreating the solid strand, I replaced every 10th garnet with a pretty filigree bead.  I thought the antique silver finish was a nice complement to the pendant.


Finished:


Now for the sneaky part!  Because of the extra beads, I had six garnets left over...

And that's how I managed to finagle a matching pair of earrings.


This is a great way to be frugal with a short strand of expensive stones, or stretch out some beloved beads from a family necklace with sentimental value. 

If you don't want to tackle a restringing project yourself, any jewelry repair service will do it for you.  And they'll make the earrings to match.  Just buy a few complementary beads, take them to the shop and ask nicely!

Blip!

5 comments:

  1. How come everything you do looks so... expensive?

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  2. It's beautfiul! And even if it seems super obvious, it is this little touch which makes things different (for me at least ^^). Now I want one like this too!

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  3. I think what you created from the "broken" necklace looks much more elegant. Great job. I just found your blog and I am really enjoying your creations!!! Anne in NC

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  4. Do you have a store? You should. You are so creative.

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  5. This was my string of garnet beads that was given to me more than 20 years ago by a graduate student friend from Nepal. I really enjoyed wearing it as a casual necklace and I was so bummed when it broke. Lucky I found out about Michelle. She not only made it wearable again, but also made it much more elegant. Plus, now I have cute earrings that I can wear with the necklace or more casually with jeans. Thanks, Michelle!

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