Repair Jobs
While we were in Oregon I picked up two projects from my gracious hostess at the farm.
This was an interesting necklace. I love the pendant, it is gorgeous. The pendant was in a bag with the oval beads, the two hematite beads and the small silver colored beads. She told me that she would like the oval beads separated by the silver beads. That seemed easy enough.
When I opened up the bag and laid out the beads I noticed two things. First, there were not enough beads. Second, there was not a clasp. Neither are really a problem as I have a pretty good bead stash to work with. However, I’m not sure that the round beads are silver and all I have are sterling beads. I was hesitant to mix them. I have a pretty sterling silver toggle clasp, so I decided to use that as well. I don’t see the sense in hanging a spendy gemstone pendant on a plated clasp.
I laid out the beads that I had been given to work with and it was only about 12 or 13 inches long. I wanted it to be about the same length as the other necklace that she gave me so that meant I was going to have to add quite a few beads.. I ended up pulling out some green pearls, along with a bunch of sterling bead caps that I have been sitting on for a few years.
I ended up alternating the oval beads with the green pearls. I placed the sterling bead caps on either side of the pearls. I separated the pearls and oval beads with the smaller silver beads that she had given me. I hope that she likes it. 🙂
The second repair job involved wire wrapping.
This one was tough. The necklace was still together. Originally the pendant and the pearl that it is hanging below were on the same headpin. Looking at it, I almost think that it might be missing either a bead cap or another small bead. The wire was broken just above the pendant so we laid out everything the way it was supposed to go and there was a gap. That means, it was either missing a bead or component, or the beads were on there very loosely. I have no idea what might be missing (if anything). I also have no idea where the components were purchased from. That makes matching things a bit more difficult.
Right after we returned from Oregon the man and I went to the Gem Faire. I did not take the parts with me, but I did stumble across some head pins that looked a lot like the one that was broken. So, I picked up a bag of head pins. When we got home we compared the two, and the one I purchased was quite a bit smaller than what I was replacing. So, the boyfriend and I set out to find what we were looking for. We went to three different bead shops.
We did not find any usable headpins at the first shop. We did however find some smaller bead caps that look just like the ones in the necklace. I picked up a pair to play with. The trip to the second bead shop was a total waste of time. We didn’t see what we were looking for and what we did see we couldn’t buy because the person working the shop was so involved in her phone call that she didn’t want to help us. We did however leave knowing an awful lot about her dating life. 🙂 The girl in the third shop was much more helpful. We were able to buy larger headpins. The wire was pretty stiff though and it wouldn’t go through the pearl. Also, it was too short to string everything on to and still wrap back around. Something was going to have to give.
The man and I played around with it for a bit and decided that given our options it was best to have the pendant hang freely. So, I made a link to hang the pearl from and connected the pendant underneath it. I liked the look of the smaller bead caps, but he thought that the larger bead cap looked better. It is for his mom, so he got the deciding vote. It is a pretty necklace. I just love the color of the beads. I seem to have a strong preference for green and turquoise stones.