Purple birthday

I needed to make some different type of jewelry after making all those MOP button necklaces. So I pulled some beautiful purple beads together to make a birthday surprise for my friend JoAnn.

The necklace was really pretty,  but purple is a hard color to photograph. ..This picture really didn't show the lovely purple beads at their best.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Captain!

 

MOP buttons

What do you do with a whole bag of 1/2" mother of pearl shank buttons?

String/overlap them together!! They give the soft silky warm pearl feeling and weight  without the top dollar prices of regular pearls. 

 They are pearls after all.. Just in button form!!

I've sold quite a few of these necklaces using different sizes, colors, and forms of these shank buttons.

Extra Mother-of- pearl (MOP)) buttons

Button update:

     I have accumulated quite a few of vintage MOP/mother-of-pearl buttons. I love the cool silky feel of the buttons and wanted to make a necklace, but couldn't figure out a different way to use the buttons. I then saw a picture of a necklace made from MOP buttons on pinterest and gave it a try. I started on this project two days ago and began  thinking I'd bitten off more than I could handle...really frustrating.. But in the end it turned out nice and I found a way to repurpose all the MOP vintage buttons accumulating in my button coffers.

     I started by stringing the buttons on silk cord, but the 

cord wouldn't hold up the buttons. I tried wired ribbon..didn't 

work. Next I tried wire....this started me down the right path. I

 put on a button, twisted the button on the wire, moved down

 a bit twisted on another button. This gave me the 

scaffolding for the rest of the buttons. Then I strung and tied 

the buttons on silk string with slip knots and wound the

 silk/button string around the wired buttons. I filled in with

pearls and more buttons until I got to the end of the wired 

string. I then tied the two strings together with wired ribbon and

 wound the wire ribbon around 

the center strings and between the buttons. It gave the necklace 

even more support and covered up the wire and knots. I covered 

up the end of the lines (wire,ribbon,string) by making a

series of slip knots to finish the necklace. Whew...complicated!!! 

But silky smooth and I've had many compliments every time

 I wear it.

Vintage lace and copper beads

Trial and error..always trying something new. This was a fragile piece of lace..so I  again used a wired ribbon to give the lace support. ....supported it enough to allow me to bead the lace with copper beads (I made the copper beads from tubing). I wrapped the lace around the wire/pearls and threaded wire, ribbon, and lace through each copper bead.








It got too complicated at the end...tried to get too cleaver...
didn't work.....needed to simplify.

So I took it apart and tried again...  Much nicer this try!!!!!

Chaining lace?

How to use this lovely fragile lace? I tried several things, but ended up using this terrific large loop, fine wire chain. This chain supported the lace...did not  overpower the lace.  I "wove" the lace through the chain, added a few beads, a lace clasp and neck chain....made a really pretty necklace  that was surprisingly easy.

Do Over

Do over.  I just didn't like the original necklace design....so I simplified using two pretty silver buttons, a silver wire coil and some larger silver pearl beads to anchor the bottom...better!!!

Saving lace

I acquired several yards of antique lace carefully wrapped and preserved..it had a note attached about the lace. It was purchased at ZCMI (Utah store) in 1900  by the Manti town dressmaker.  It is an interesting black cotton lace with silver metallic threads. I tried beading a bit of lace but pretty  brittle.  So I backed the lace with black satin ribbon for support and pulled out my MOP ring beads.  I used a head pin and some beads to turn the rings into "buckles" and this allowed me to gently weave the ribbon/lace through the "buckles" for decoration.   I added a couple large hole crystal beads to decorate the bottom "tails" a bit .