More Embellished Medieval Jewels

The weather this past weekend kept me inside where it was warm and dry and cozy. I love the rain, but rain in Winter sucks. It's not the gentle, light rain that cools down a Summer day in the deep South. It was one of those days where it felt like it was only raining on my house.

I decided to make the best of it and got out my bail-making pliers and twisted some Vintaj and other brass stampings. My shipment of faux gemstone glass jewels came in, and I was very excited to see what I could do with them. They are a little smaller than the citrine I used in the other pendant (see below), and I had to get creative about raising the profile to fit the Vintaj window frame, but by the second one, I had the process down pat.

I chose not to use polymer backgrounds with these, but you could certainly add another pendant behind this one if you wanted a backdrop to frame it. I did one in amethyst and brass and one in amethyst and silver (which my Mother appropriated for herself before I could photograph it) with no additional charms or drops and these with some Vintaj and crystal blinginess.

Then I spied this cathedral-shaped polymer pendant that I made a couple of months ago in the "to be made into something spectacular box". I had just purchased some gold, pear-shaped Swarovski pearls and thought they would look pretty paired with the silver and bronze/gold tones of the polymer pendant. I added some Black Diamond Swarovski bicones, too.

My Aunt Audrey, Momma's next-to-youngest sister, asked me recently if I made bracelets. I have not. I don't use a bead board to make my necklace designs. I have an unconventional way of string beads that drives my jewelry designer friends nuts. I don't sit there and calculate how many 10mm beads I will to go with how many 8mm beads and yada yada yada to get a 7 1/2" bracelet. Math isn't, and never has been, my thing. The bottom line is that the length never works out so the pattern is even, which it must be to appease my OCD self.



But, wanting to please and knowing I needed to branch out to bracelets, I decided to try one, with the Vintaj and other brass filigree I had on hand, and one of the medieval framed gems.

It took four times as long as it takes me to make a necklace or a polymer clay pendant. I re-worked it several times and fiddled with it for what seemed like forever, but here it is. Sigh. There may never be another, but it's pretty, don't you think?

Now it is back to the present and time to put the time machine away for a bit so I can finish all the other things I need to do!