Lace Collar project

Jewelry can be made in all kinds of forms...including fabric & lace.

This collar can dress-up any number of tops or dresses. It would make a cute collar for a little girl's Easter dress.

Using my serger machine, I sewed 4 layers of this lace on top of one another giving it a layered look.  Then I used my reg. sewing machine to stitch ribbon on the collar edge to cover serger thread.  I made a loop in the ribbon and attached at one end of the collar to make a button loop.  I found a beautiful vintage button and hand sewed it to the other side as well as hand-stitched on  a  little ribbon bow  for adornment....

Serger lace necklace

I am loving my new serger!! This was a quick "sewn" necklace" project. I had a large roll of this lace..not vintage...I over lapped the lace and used my serger to sew down the middle so as to make two side of "frills".  I made a long loop (for around my neck and to the bottom of the piece) . I pulled the bottom ends together  and tied a knot (hidden in copper bead. I wrapped a piece of beading wide around the knot...threaded it down through the bead and beaded on the handing heart pendant and pearls..finished off the pendant with an eye loop on the bottom to hold it all.  No closures, nothing fancy.
Just plain frilly and fun to make.

Copper Butterfly for Berkeley

I made an extra-large  butterfly from copper wire for my Goddaughter Berkeley.. She loved it!!!

"Look Ma, no metal chain!"

I made this necklace with NO CHAIN..only vintage lace, some ribbon, and some seashells.

This  necklace was pretty easy.  I had a long scrap of this vintage lace and some seashells.. I used my serger machine to sew the edges of the lace together (giving strength to the lace) I rolled the  lace lengthwise to hide the stitches inside the "fabric chain". I experimented to see which seashells could bead the lace without tearing, and decided on these cowrie shells  The shells held the lace together, & gave the necklace weight so it would hand right. Using little satin ribbon I tied a  knot under each shell to hold them in place.  I made a hook/clasp  for the closure to complete.

I didn't really plan this necklace out. It just sort of  fell into place.  Often I will come across a piece of  lace or beads or buttons...that kind of  "talk to me".  I pull a project bowl out and gather somethings that might work together and just start making a necklace or bracelet. I'm  really a tactile learner. I do my best sometimes just creating on the "fly"...it's great problem solving for me.

HOWEVER.. This approach can cause  problems, too!! Sometimes a project, in spite of my best intentions, turns out WAY MORE difficult that I  can handle..ending in a hornet's nest of complications and tossed into my "do-over-pick-apart-and-start-over"  bucket.

Antique lace collar

I acquired this lovely vintage lace collar from a sack of old lace given to me by a friend.  It was dingy, stained, and torn.  I soaked the lace in OxyClean which brightened it right up.
I stitched up most of the tears (although one is still showing here...I missed it. I had a vintage necklace of tightly strung small shell fragments, and I hand stitched the necklace to the edge of this lace making the shell necklace the new collar for this lace. It worked okay but when I wore it, the necklace rolled curling the lace necklace funny. So I took it apart and did something different.  Using my serger, I attached this pretty  pink chiffon ribbon onto lace neckline instead.   Then I added two absolutely beautiful pink rose vintage buttons for decoration! This turned out really nice.

The bottom of the lace looks crooked here, but it's not...just the way it was hanging on the model and the camera angle.

Challenging construction

OKAY..this was another project that started out easy and turned nightmarish quickly. I used a VERY FRAGILE vintage lace that I wrapped with satin ribbon for protection. I threaded the ribbon, lace, wire through every large hole bead. I sewed a vintage button on top to hold the ribbon around the lace....the nightmare got going when I had to finish this pendant piece.  All I can say is that it took me 4 tries to figure out how to pull it together into the pendant.  I about tossed it twice into the garbage...EEEH GADS!!!!

Copper wire vintage MOP buttons

This necklace took awhile to make.  I made a connecting link on each side of the button (two links per buttons)....connected the links together making a chain...and added  a wired focal piece to finish it off.  I even made a copper wire hook closure to finish the necklace.  The sounds simple but it was a lot of wire bending.  My hands were sore when I finished this creation.

I enjoy wearing it too....silky smooth vintage MOP buttons and the warm copper make a nice looking and nice feeling necklace.

Copper butterfly jewlery

I tried several beads before I decided these small glass pearl beads and copper spacer beads would work with my copper butterflies to make a necklace.
I threaded the pearls and spacer beads, then threaded the 7-strand beading wire through the body of the butterflies to connect them into the necklace.

I made a couple little mini butterflies for earrings.  Everytime I wear these, people think they are really original and cute.

Copper Butterflies

I really enjoy working and creating jewelry using copper wire.  But it's gotten so expensive.
My husband, a manufacturing engineer by degree, found a solution to my plight  of finding low-cost workable copper wire: At a shop that rewinds electrical motors!  The copper wire was on  huge roll..and about half the going retail prices.  He's my hero!!!!

I saw some insects kind of like these in a magazine...and gave it a try to make my own.
This is my version of the copper insects: copper wire butterflies. (The wings "flap" too)

1) Make a coil of wire for the body
2) Take a long piece of copper wire and make a flat spiral (top wing)...run the remaining wire through the body coil...and make another flat spiral  (bottom wing) with rest of wire. Repeat to make a set of wings for the other side.
3) Bend a piece of wire in half...push it down through the body coil.  Bend the remaining wire into flat spirals to make antennae. This piece acts as a pin to hold it all together. You may need to bend this part around a bit to  keep it from pulling out.

* Stunning necklace or art piece?

 Is this creation of mine an art piece or a piece of jewelry? I crossed the line somewhere in making this necklace. It's so daring and so gorgeous and I put so much effort into making it, that I really don't want to sell it.  I have at least $150.00 in matched VINTAGE, carved, large, MOP buttons, agate stones,  freshwater pearls, and findings...not to mentions about 40 hours in labor...seriously.

The original version of this was "crooked".  I had used mismatched buttons and so some of button pendants hung at different lengths...It killed me to start over, but I did.

To make each button pendant/chain, I folded a long piece of beading wire in half, strung on the botton pearl and agate stone to the middle of the wire. Then I crossed the wires though the buttons twice and repeated: Twist the wire, string another pearl/stone/button etc.  I had to be careful. If I twisted the wire too  much or too hard...it would break.  And it did.  I had to do two of the button pendants over because the wire broke.

When the pendants were done, I then had to change neck chains twice because they weren't strong enough to support the pendants.

This necklace is almost too daring. I  imagine a tall beautiful leggy woman with a long neck wearing this..a Hollywood starlet or someone wanting to
make sure everyone noticed her.  Or not.
It's my weird imagination that created this necklace....
.I can imagine the person who might wear it as well!!    LOL  LOL LOL

Pony beads to the rescue

I found some large-hole,  clear acrylic, pony beads that I could bead this vintage lace with!!  Then I added a  focal piece by making a shiny checker-board faceted, vintage black onyx button. Using the pony beads allowed me to make a different kind of necklace with a fragile piece of vintage lace

Beaded vintage lace

I acquired several yards of this beautiful early 1900's lace. It was to delicate to pull through a bead. I first strengthened the lace with a layer of fabric stiffener product. When dry and clear, I stitched on silver tube beads and pearls by hand.  Then I attached acrylic crystals (lighter in weight than regular crystals) and pearls with tiny rings to the outer embroidered edge of the lace. I added a silver closure.
Voila! a pretty, delicate, re-purposed vintage lace necklace.

Many shades of green

For my sister

For my Mom

MY FAVORITE 

I made several necklaces of beads, buttons and bits pieces from other broken jewelry for myself & another for my sister. Both used green colored beads.
My mother saw my necklace and wanted one for her too. So I pledged to make her a necklace like mine.  The two green necklaces put a drain on my available supplies..so I changed a couple things, and used a variety of beads/findings..to "stretch" out my green beads (spacer beads and larger beads).
  I like stringing buttons and beads over a chain (instead of string)...saves a lot of time wiring and counting links.  But unless you have a very fine chain, you'll need large hole beads  which can get expensive.  The middle strand was seed beads and butterfly spacer beads on beading wire.   The inside strand was individual beads linked together. The outside strand was beads over chain. I used acrylic, wood, vintage buttons, glass, stone... A little bit of everything

I made these  for me!!!

Ball chain necklace

I've never worked much with ball chains...seems kind of cheap. But I found a decorative ball chain and gave it a try.  I had a beautiful faceted,  large drill hole, black onyx bead that I strung on first. I used two large drill hole fresh water"potato" pearls to encase the onyx bead, two pretty,  large-drill hole decorative silver metal beads, and two black glass pearls for the focal piece.     I had two more glass black pearl beads, so I "anchored" them on the ball chain with black crimp covers. To finish off the necklace I used decorative ball chain endings and magnet closures.  Simple, quick, and pretty.

I'm sure there are better ways to work with ball chain...but this was my first attempt.

All recommendations welcomed.

Beautiful... but lessons learned

I saw a necklace similar to this (left) and thought I'd try to make one like it.  This necklace was tedious and time consuming. Lots of crimp work which are not my favorite things to do in jewelry-making. Each strand started with a crimp and wire cover to make 

alike endings. Another crimp, beads, crimp.  Space, crimp, beads, crimp.

 I made 5 strands like this and worked all 5 strands through the starfish focal piece and voila! I thought I was done.
Or so I thought! I discovered the  fifth strand had not been strung through the starfish! 

What to do?  I took the closure apart..took this (above right)) blue strand out, and put the closure back together.  Whew! lucky! Sometimes I end up having to redo the whole thing for one screw up!! 

 The best news:  I took this lost blue strand and made it into it's own little necklace. 

Lesson learned:  Quality control--Check work before finishing a piece!!

NFS: But This necklace was somewhat expensive to make.
 To give you an idea of costs involved:

Blue beads, Lapis Lazuli stones 12.00

Purple beads: agate stones 3.00

Shiny Purple beads: glass seed beads 2.00

Metalllic purple: Magnetite beads. 7.00

Starfish: blown glass: (This was given to me..but a similar one..5.00 approx)
7-strand beading wire:  7.00
crimps: .05
Closures 4.99
labor 20+ hours ......  @7.00 per hr   140.00  = total  182.00 approx

Charmed by Betty Boop

BETTY BOOP:
   Occasionally when doing jewelry I come across something that just makes me giggle the whole time I'm constructing. I bought this Betty Boop charm for $1.00...added red, silver, black beads (the only colors fitting for Betty) to make this necklace. I laughed the whole time...I guess Betty Boop just "charmed" me LOL into finding my inner Betty!!! LOL LOL

Using leftovers

I had a piece of "fishnet" type material leftover from another project and decided to use it somehow in a necklace. I stretched it out into a thin rope and started beading the material with clear acrylic beads, black pony beads and painted wood beads.  I made a loop with the top long stand and crisscrossed the strands. I made a double knot and continued beading to the ends. I gathered the two ends and tied a double knot, enclosed the knot in a big hole wood bead, and pulled the remaining fabric out through the bottom.  Trimmed up the ends with scissors. Nothing fancy, but a great way to use up leftover bits of this and that.

Mixing mediums

I had just a little piece of vintage lace from another project, enough to maybe make a choker necklace...but tried something different.  I stitched onto the lace  freshwater pearls, little shiny vintage buttons and smaller seed pearls. Then I added this focal glass piece and a few metal beads on the bottom. I attached a coppery chain on the other ends of the lace to make a closure.  Always fun & usually challenging,  mixing jewelry mediums.

Purple MOP shank button necklace

Shades of purple...

I have a real affinity  for MOP shank buttons.
These buttons are dyed MOP shank buttons.
I love the smooth cool silky pearl feeling...even though just buttons.
I recently acquired a bunch of these buttons in all these lovely shades of purple..and decided to make a necklace. I didn't have quite enough to make a full strand so I pulled out my purple seed beads and finished the strand in matching beads. Not a fancy piece, but pretty colors, silky overlapping MOP buttons can be quite charming and feel lovely to wear!!