A dear friend is traveling to China & Taiwan soon, and needed gifts for all her friends (she is originally from Taiwan). She purchased many necklaces from me for this purpose. While she was looking over all my available necklaces, she kept commenting on the necklace I was wearing. It is from my personal collection, made from an old brooch, with purple glass stones. It is one of my favorites....

It was missing a stone at the top, so I covered the hole with a piece of filigree!

Her interest in it motivated and inspired me to make some of my other old pins and brooches into necklaces....

First up is a blue butterfly pin I've had mere inches away from my bead desk for over a year (actually, me hoarding something for a year would be a short amount of time!) Let the digging begin. I dug through my blue beads to find beads to match. The round dotted beads are cool, I don't remember where I got them. They are round and covered with gold dust with the dots being sliced away, to reveal the blue glass under the gold. Kinda cool. The rest of the beads are left over bits I had in a baggie of mixed, mostly Czech, beads.

 How lucky that the butterfly's antennae had holes in the ends, to attach jump rings!!

 

 Next up is this fabulous rhinestone Art Deco piece. I do not know what it was in it's earlier life - it does not have a pin back or any other finding attached to the back, and no evidence anything was ever attached. It certainly looks like it would have been a dress clip, in my opinion. I got it at a garage sale a while ago. I've been on a Jesse James bead kick lately (making Pandora-ish necklaces on ball chain) and the 2 white beaded beads are left-overs from that, as well as the square crystal beads, and the green faceted rondells. The opaque round green beads near the front are vintage (from a broken vintage necklace). The balance of beads are Czech glass, or vintage rhinestone beads and spacers (from Margola Imports). This necklace is a bit longer than I normally make, about 24" or so.

 

 Another angle....she doesn't have any bad angles!

 

 A close up of the rhinestone focal. It has 3 green cat's eye glass cabs.
I threaded wire through holes in the design to create the wire wrapped loops.

 

 And, what fabulous necklace would be complete with out matching earrings? The oval melon beads are a bit greener in real life than this photo shows,

 

 This next necklace is made entirely with left-overs from the Jesse James beads mentioned above. These beads have normal sized holes, and wouldn't work on the ball chain. I added the Vintaj filigree bead caps, jump rings and chain, and wire. The smaller beads towards the back are slightly lighter in color and the 2 bigger ones towards the from have a slight AB finish. But they all still match each other.

 

 This necklace looks like something a royal would wear (except they'd be real gems, not glass).

These necklaces are a bit blingy-er (more blingy?) than my usual style, yet they are still "me". I do like crystals with the Vintaj brass, like opposites attracting each other.