A Glutton for Punishment Part II

In truth I had placed my last blog posting into drafts until I had completed this complicated necklace as there were many days between where I left this project and its ultimate completion.

As was mentioned in my last post, I'm either a glutton for punishment or crazy as I put a small fortune and way more time than I should have into creating this piece. In the previous installment of "A Glutton for Punishment" we left my black and white project at about this point in its progress towards completion (see Photo below).

  Photo below...Since then much has been added.

I decided to use the sweet little, jet black glass hearts as single dangles instead of coupling them with the silver glass leaves. If you look closely you might be able to see the jet hearts topped with tiny 3 mm firepolished crystals and micro 2mm beads of hematite. Instead of the black glass hearts the silver leaf dangles received small swirled wire charms that I made myself (see photo below for close-up). It worked out well, or at least I'm satisfied with the results.

You probably don't remember (I certainly didn't expect you to that's for sure) that I mentioned my project had to be put on hold yet another time as I required some type of link to add the side of the necklace. Not just any old link, I needed something special and found it in this hammered textured rhodium finished oval link. Perfection !!!

Personally I like the way this link helps tie the elaborate center section to the sides of the necklace but I realize this is a matter of taste.

 

The other side is attached by way of a link that I made using a large black glass bead and a couple of pretty bead caps, making sure that the wire loops were sufficiently large. A sand dollar charm was added as a counter weight to the large link and as an element of interest.

This side of the necklace also sports some whimsical hand coiled spirals and an assortment of stacked or capped black and white beads.

 

The side with the spirals, ends with a hook style clasp that I made using 20 gauge wire (doubled) and embellished with a complimentary black (slightly wire wrapped) bead.

 

The other side of the necklace features a fair sized cable chain to accommodate the clasp. A cute teardrop white bead is used as an end to the extension chain and is adorned with contrasting black beads and that really cute bead cap (love these caps!).

Photos below show the completed necklace.  Perhaps I fell into Alice's rabbit burrow and went a little too far with the whimsy but to be honest this piece never truly followed my carefully drawn plans, instead it seemed to tell me what to do and, even though it was a long time in the making and created a lot more work than I ever imagined, I'm grateful that I listened to it. 

Unfortunately the stacks of black beads look like one continuous bead in my photos, I tried making them (the photos, not the beads) lighter and though that made the individual beads recognizable it also washed out everything else  ... so I settled for what appears to look like big long black beads which are in reality really either 3 to 5 beads stacked together.  Ah the joys of photography.

A Glutton for Punishment Part I

I'm not sure if I'm just a glutton for punishment or just plain crazy ! I tend to underestimate my future projects and start out thinking they will be small and manageable however they always end up becoming big, complicated and time consuming.
Several posts back ( Trouble Getting From Dream to Reality )I gave you a glimpse of a vision that I had of a black and white piece. It was a vision that danced in my head like those proverbial sugar plums in the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas".   But what a challenge it has been, seems I never had just the right things that I needed such as strong enough jumprings, ones that wouldn't come open as soon as the necklace was picked up. So I'd order parts, wait for them to arrive, then sit down and with anticipation of completing the project dive back into putting it together. Part way through it would dawn on me that something was wrong and guess what ? ... I needed something else that wasn't in my vast supplies of beads, findings, wires and parts. SHOOT !!! DRAT !!!  And Double Dang-it !!!
So have to go look around,  find what I think will do the trick, place an order and wait some more.

Photo above..Lovely black and white Venetian glass oval bead will be the center focal point.  Only as the more I worked on it I realized that 1 - the center focal point was being buried beneath the disc bead dangle and 2 - my handmade jumprings,  made from 20 gauge silver plated copper wire, kept coming apart. 

Finally I did manage to put together the center area of the necklace and it has turned out far more complex than I had ever imagined. The heavy weight 18 gauge jumprings from Jewelry Supply that I ended up purchasing are performing well and I haven't had any open up on me yet. Yay!  Unfortunately I've just about used them all in this project and decided to order some more from a different vendor ... the new jumprings are not nearly as nice nor as strong so it's true that sometimes you get what you pay for.

Photo above ... Been busy as a bee wire wrapping black and white disc beads to use as dangles. I decided to add a larger solid back bead for the Venetian bead to hang from as the black and white oval bead needed to be longer. Yes, it's filling in nicely but still needs something.

Photo below... How about some of these Czech pressed glass leaf beads with a silver finish ?  Might add the tiny black hearts as dangles just below the leaves ?

Photo below ... As you can see I added a large black bead at the focal center to make the Venetican oval bead hang lower, it was being hidden by all the black and white disc bead dangles.  Hmm and those lovely little jet black glass hearts that have one side with an aurora borealis finish ?  Well they didn't look so hot as dangles hanging WITH the leaves so I may add them as dangles on their own ... not sure at this stage.  Besides I now need some type of large, fancy link to attach at the side of the necklace. 

Photo below ... As you can see I've attached a few of the silver leaves but it still has a lot of fill work left to be done and there's still the problem of what to add to the loops that I created beneath the silver leaves ... the loops I made to hang the sweet little black glass hearts from.

Stay tuned for Part II as things may change ... oh undoubtedly they will change!