So this year I picked up on jewelry making...mostly pearl knotting and simple wirework. I love being able to buy my own stones and rework pieces after I've gotten tired of them. I'm mainly working with craft wire for now until I get better, some of these pieces I'll probably re-do with gold-filled or gold wire once my skills are better and I waste less wire!
As previously mentioned, my favourite bead/gem to work with are genuine pearls...I've been obsessed with pearls my entire life (even before the birthstone project kicked off a full-on gem obsession) and it's also my birthstone 😄
Here is a rare Sea of Cortez pearl that I made into a pendant/necklace. This pearl is grown in rainbow-lipped oysters that only grow in, you guessed it, the Sea of Cortez. My dream is to own an entire strand of these one day but that'll probably run me $15k+!
Here's a Tahitian "dancing" keshi necklace, keshi pearls are little nucleus-less pearls that are produced along with nucleated natural pearls. They are typically smaller in size and irregular in shape.
This strand of unusual greenish rose-gold freshwater off-round pearls 7.5-8.5mm caught my eye. I LOVE metallic pearls and freshwaters have come a long way over the last few years to have beautiful colours and amazing lustre. I knotted this with light pink Beaders' Secret thread and finished it off with a rose gold filled clasp:
This is a super long 72-inch Mermaid Strand made with baroque blue Japanese akoya pearls, moonstone rondelles (another birthstone of mine!), faceted stones which I suspect are chalcedony, silver beads, two kinds of lead-free crystals, and faceted aqua glass chicklets. This strand took a LONG time, probably one of my biggest projects to date. Every stone is individually knotted, save for a few with holes slightly too big to knot. It took a lot of time to procure the right stones, sort the stones, plan layout, string and knot. I'd say it probably took me anywhere from 16-20 hours to do, and I did it over the course of about a month (little things here and there)
This is actually a project that I did for my mother in law. She had a triple strand of graduated faux pearls from her mother (hubs' grandmother) which was broken and needed to be reknotted. She was OK with me saving the original layout or making it into something she'll wear more often (a long necklace). Since the strand was broken, pearls were everywhere and I didn't want to have to sort out the graduated layout, so I used the pearls to make a long 32" necklace, earrings and a bracelet set. Took me awhile to pick the right clasp to get the look I wanted. She was thrilled with the result and so was I!
These are two loose pearl strands (unknotted) that I currently have. The top one is a metallic peach pink freshwater pearl strand, about 8-9mm in size. The bottom is an AMAZING 10-11.5 mm metallic white Edison pearl strand (nucleated freshwater pearls) that DH bought for me in May for our 5th wedding annivesary. I have yet to knot either one but I'm looking for that perfect 14k gold clasp for the anniversary strand, so I'm taking my time 🙂