I Upcycled the Lid from my Felted Vessel to make this Pendant

Shiny aluminum pendant with upcycled felt in the window. Peek-a-boo!

Remember my felted vessel?

 embellished felted vessel

I had a 4 inch circle of felt leftover after I cut the lid in the vessel, and I've been hoarding it. I had no idea what to do with it, but I worked VERY hard to make it, and I couldn't just throw it away!

Finally, while teaching the Cold Connections Workshop last week, it hit me: work it into a piece of metal jewelry, somehow. That's about as fully formed as the inspiration was when it occurred to me, but after playing around for awhile, this is what I came up with.

Shiny aluminum pendant with upcycled felt window

I loved the blues and reds in the felt, and I just really thought they looked better with silver than with copper. Using silver metal creates a couple of problems I'm still trying to overcome - sterling is awfully expensive, so I'd rather not use it. Aluminum is fairly inexpensive, but it won't etch (more on that later this week), and it won't take liver of sulfur patina. So, while I could easily texture the aluminum with hammers, or stamp on it, I still couldn't accentuate the texturing/stamping with LOS, so it really wouldn't show up very well.

So, if I was going to use aluminum, it was going to untextured - and I decided if it was going to be shiny, it was going to be REALLY shiny, so I tumbled it (before the felt was added), and after the whole pendant was finished it, I polished it with the Dremel and the radial discs, so this pendant has a brilliant mirror finish. So shiny that my camera lens is visible in almost every single pic. How do professional photographers get around obstacles like this? Beats me.

After cutting and prepping the aluminum, I used my disc cutter to cut the circle in the front piece of aluminum. I put the 2 pieces together, with the felt in the middle, and grommeted the stack together with matching blue grommets.

The back of the shiny aluminum pendant, reflecting my camera lens nicely! :(

 It's available in my Etsy shop!

I have more blue felt leftover, so I plan to make more jewelry with it - just need to figure out some more ways to incorporate the felt. After all, this window design is so last week, literally (LOL!)