Blog carnival – reworked piece of jewelry

Every month some of the jewelry artists belonging to the Jewelry Artisans Network get together and blog on the same topic. This month, our task was to take a piece of jewelry and rework it.

As soon as the topic was announced I knew exactly which piece I wanted to give a makeover. Last fall, I made a swanky, showy piece that I took out on the road to a couple of holiday parties. I felt totally glamorous while wearing it and received lots of compliments. Here’s a picture of it:

Glam and swanky

I wore this with a dark brown turtleneck and it really got a lot of attention. So why would I want to give it a makeover?

Answer: it was a great piece for going to receptions, because I was standing up most of the time. The outer strand hung down below my waist. Although I loved how it looked when I was at the party, I felt kind of silly while at work.  Also, I thought the proportions were off.

My college student daughter came home for the holidays and saw me with the necklace. She liked it, but thought it was too much for her (she’s very petite, which I am not).

So she made a similar necklace in more muted colors and much shorter, with more chain and fewer beads. See her necklace below.

 

 

Liz' necklace

Liz didn’t like the way it hung; the chain links tangle up at the base of the necklace. Meanwhile, I thought it was kind of fun and funky, so she gave it to me.

It goes with everything! I think I wore it every day for a week. So I said to myself, hey! I’m going to take my inspiration from the necklace that was inspired by my necklace, and turn the first necklace into something more wearable.

The outer strand of the original necklace was all Chinese glass crystal and was way too long. I cut it off and made a new strand that was shorter, and I replaced a lot of the crystal with sections of chain.

Detail of reworked strand

I used a smaller chain for the outer strand than I did for the inner strand, because I still wanted it to be longer than the inner strand, and I didn’t want it to overpower me when worn. On the right is a close-up of a segment of the replacement parts.

I kept the twisted coin-shaped beads because that’s the most fun part of the original outer strand. I think by replacing some of the beads with chain, it really toned down the whole necklace. See it for yourself below.

Glam - but not too, no?

Here are the links to the other bloggers:

http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/blog_pos….ng_an_old_piece
http://www.catswire.blogspot.com/2012/02/rip-it-up.html

http://beadupastorm.blogspot.com/2012/02….working-or.html