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!)

Simply Dotty

These black and white polka dotted beads started out as a "stretchy" bracelet I saw at Target - one of those beads-on-elastic cheapie things that never fit well, then stretch out, and then break. I hate elastic jewelry!

But I love black and white, and I love polka dots, so I bought the bracelet, took it apart (OK, cut the elastic) - and remade them into several pairs of earrings by adding a white bead and a dangle of jet Czech firepolish.

They sold pretty quickly, and now I wish I had kept a pair for me!

I'm intentionally not using the words "repurposed" or "upcycled" here - for a couple of reasons. One, those words are used to death, in my opinion, and two, they are so often used incorrectly! I don't see what I did as particularly "green," - I just saw something I liked (the black and white bead) and turned it into something I would wear. Nothing noble going on here - just jewelry design!

I've been Resinating!

I have been playing around with Ice Resin, making some resin jewelry. It's fun, and fast (except for the 3-day cure time!) - and a neat way to use found objects, photos, and other trinkets.

These are a few pieces I have created:

In this piece, I used a bottlecap for the bezel, and painted it blue with my beloved alcohol inks. I lined the bottlecap with some funky scrapbooking paper, then decided to go a little meta, a little upcycle-y, and put a pop-tab in the bottlecap bezel. I added some scrapbooking flowers, and I threw in a gear. Going for little steampunk, too, I guess. Poured in the resin, and 3 days later, I finished it with a copper jumpring that I also painted blue with alcohol ink. I really like how this pendant turned out! 

This one has a bronze-colored simulated wood-grain bezel, and I filled it with gears, paper flowers, and Martha Stewart glitter!! Ooh-la-la! And then poured in the resin, and voila!

For this pendant I used the same bronzy wood-grained bezel, and added several gears, on top of some shiny copper-colored DMC cross-stitching floss, and more Martha glitter.

 For this pendant, I used a silver-toned bezel, and added a green quilled paper butterfly, and shiny blue Martha glitter. I finished it with a matching green satin cord, so it is ready to wear.

I made lots more, and may post them later. It is a fun, and easy, project, and I will gradually be listing them on Etsy.

And now, back to work on my Bead Soup Blog Party Creation. That necklace won't make itself, you know!! Time is running out! Eeeek!