On My Workbench: Wire Wrapped Peace Sign Necklace

  

A peek into my workshop...

Wire Wrapped Peace Sign Necklace 

When I put the photo below up on my facebook page

Friday night, I entitled it "The Friday Night Special!"

I was playing with some fine gauge sterling silver wire before you know it, the peace sign appeared! ...I had some beads in mind that I had been in the mood to work with - mainly the small rainbow moonstones on the right.  I decided to add just 2 or 3 of them to the pendant as accents. 

Problem was, once I had the moonstones attached they faded right into the peace sign design! This would not do... so I used a Liver of Sulfur mixture to patina the silver, transforming it into a dark gray. 

This is what it looked like after I removed it from the 
patina solution.

Next I took a polishing cloth with some old silver polish
 on it and just polished it up a bit, removing some of the gray
so that you could see spots of the shiny sterling silver.

Finally finished!

My favorite finish is to show great contrast between the dark black and the shiny silver. 
I love the way this turned out! 


What do you think?


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How To Make A Scarab Necklace

Remember scarabs?

Scarab beetles were worshiped by the ancient Egyptians. 
Mysterious!

 I've always liked scarabs because #1, I think they're interesting 
and #2, I think they make unusual & unique jewelry. 

Check out how I turned some scarab beads into jewelry pendants!

On my workbench... I'm going to turn these carved stone scarab beads into one of a kind 
necklace pendants. 

My sketch inspiration. The page says I sketched this one on 2/7/08! Sometimes ideas and designs
 stay on paper a long time until I actually fabricate them into finished works. Half of it is finding the
time to try out new designs, the other half is being in the mood! Mood is everything!

The first thing I did was cut a 4" length of 22g sterling silver wire, strung on my scarab, and made a wrapped
loop on each end of the wire. The top loop will serve as the bail to hold the chain. The bottom loop 
is where I will attach a few beaded accents of coordinating beads. Notice how I made the 
directions of the loops opposite each other. 





Here's the wrapped loop from the bail end that will accommodate the chain. 
I make that loop a little larger than the one that will be on the bottom.

And then there were three. Now for the fun part...

Choosing coordinating beads for the beaded drops. I use a selection of gemstones, pearls and or crystals.

I used sterling silver headpins for the beaded drops and simply made three drops for
 each scarab and attached them to the bottom loop with another wrapped loop. That's it!

The finished scarab necklaces.

A few types of scarab beads:

What do you think? 
Do you like scarabs? 



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