Design This – Beaded Necklace to Match Azurite and Malachite Pendant

Two years ago I purchased a beautiful azurite and malachite cabochon that had been formed and set in a handmade sterling silver mounting by Donato 2 Hawks. I looked forward to making a beaded necklace to incorporate the pendant into. The azurite is such a beautiful blue but it is different than most of the blues that I have in my bead collection and I didn’t have any malachite greens either so I needed to do some searching for the right materials. There was a bit of light blue in the pendant that reminded me of some of my turquoise beads.

At each trade show I went to after that I looked for appropriate beads. I found that some chrysocolla beads had potential. During the first year I found some nice large rounded rectangular chrysocolla beads and some faceted dark green synthetic beads. At the beginning of the second year I found some medium sized spherical malachite beads but the azurite blue continued to elude me. Just recently I found what I hoped would prove to be the final pieces to the necklace puzzle. I found some small, spherical, high shine colorful chrysocolla beads and two sizes of faceted agate spheres that were dyed a blue that looked like it would complement the azurite. I normally don’t purchase dyed components but these were a nice color that didn’t scream fake, so I brought them home.

Soon after, I had a chance to see if my collection would allow me to design a necklace that would do my pendant justice. In addition to the beads I already mentioned, I also included some silver and some opalite beads in my pile of components that looked promising. After laying out some different combinations, I settled on a few turquoise teardrops and small spheres, the rounded rectangular and high shine chrysocolla beads and both sizes of the blue dyed agate that turned out to be a good foil for the azurite in the pendant. Once I had a design that I liked, I began to string it up. Before finishing off the second end, I took a moment to see how the necklace would wear and found that the very large bail of the pendant was going to cause the pendant to slide too easily back and forth along the necklace.

Luckily this was only a minor setback. Looking closely at what I had already strung up, I saw the potential to create a loop that would keep the pendant in place. It turned out that the loop idea worked well to corral the pendant if I could find some smaller beads to allow it to bend tightly enough. Again I was lucky in that I had some dark blue seed beads in my stash that worked perfectly. The first try at making the loop took some attention away from the focal pendant however. Before I tried downsizing the loop I took a photo so I could compare my second attempt to the first one. I was pleased with the second loop. (You can see the first and second attempts above.) Now that I had a pleasing and functional design it was time to finish off the second end. Since the pendant was sterling silver, I also used sterling silver findings to complete the necklace.

If you have a special component that you would like to have incorporated into a custom piece of jewelry for you, contact me to see if I have what is needed to accomplish that for you.

Design This – Pendant from Dead iPod

What to do when your dead iPod with the custom engraving that is special to you doesn’t work anymore? You can’t just throw it away. Let Etsy’s alchemy section come to the rescue! Earlier this year I found an alchemy request titled “Make me a pendant out of a dead iPod”. At first I was stumped for an idea, then I decided a nice wooden frame sounded like a good way to accomplish this. I sent a convo to see if the requestor liked my idea and if so I needed a few questions answered so that I could make a bid. After a bit of discussion, the requestor decided to accept my bid saying, “I like the idea of a wooden frame with embellishments from the circuit board. The contrast of natural/industrial is great.”

After I received the iPod from my customer, I had to take it apart to see what was available to become part of the pendant. I took photos of the pieces(#1) and sent them to my customer to see if there was anything that especially caught her eye. The only real imperative at this point was to incorporate the custom engraving and to have an open backed frame in a dark wood color, so I mocked up a few frame and circuit board embellishments for us to contemplate(#2). The aspect ratio of the pendant mock ups kept bothering me though. I didn’t like that the pendant would be wider than it was tall. I started to think about how I might make a rounded frame. Inspiration struck and I sliced some sections off a small, cured sycamore branch and cut out an opening. I sent a photo of this to my customer and after some minor adjustments, it was a winning idea.(#3)

Now that I knew what my frame opening would be like, I needed to cut out the metal section. The iPod case was a bit tougher than I had expected, so I had to buy some less fine and stronger blades for my jewelry saw. After getting the section cut off that included the inscription, we needed to decide on what would show through the open back of the pendant frame. We finally decided on a section of circuit board.

After securing the metal piece with the engraving to the circuit board section and then the wood frame front and backs, came the part that I was really looking forward to. I had had an idea for filling the gap between the wood frame on the edges that my customer agreed to let me use.(#4) I had not worked with the materials myself before, but had seen it used in many similar circumstances and really wanted a chance to try it out myself. I thought the gap would look great filled with inlaid crushed stone. Malachite would be a great color to coordinate with the green of the circuit board. I’m pleased to say that it worked out just like I had wanted it to.

Now the only thing left was to attach some hand formed “jump rings” so that my customer could attach her pendant to a necklace and send off photos for final approval from my customer.(#’s 5 & 6) I’m happy to say that she thought the pendant was beautiful and loved the way that it turned out. It is rewarding to be able to rise to a challenge like this and successfully turn someone’s idea into reality.

Please e-mail Eclectic Design Choices or request a custom item from EDCCollective if you have a custom project that you would like to see if I can help with.