Tag Archives: repurposed

An earring to pendant conversion

A while back I found a round post earring in a charity shop. It was a single earring so therefore not the most easy thing to sell on. Also, I don’t wear earrings so if I wanted to actually wear this, I’d have to convert it to something else. So I hit on the idea of turning it into a pendant, like this:

All I had to do was gently bend the post at the back using a pair of chain nose pliers, to form a bale (see below for pic showing the back of the earring). The great thing about this particular pendant is its hidden bale, which means that the pendant doesn’t hang far below the level of the necklace/chain; you can therefore wear it with high-necked tops without worrying whether it’s going to disappear below your neckline. Winner.

This isn’t the only earring to pendant conversion I’ve done in this way – I will dig out the other one and put it on here some time.

Silver cat pendant made from a brooch

I recently bought a lot of jewellery at auction, which included this sweet little cat brooch:

Sadly, the clasp wasn’t up to the job, and sheared off when I tried gently pulling it into shape. So I filed down the stump where the clasp had been, removed the pin and curled the hinge over so that it could act as a loop for a chain. The resulting pendant is now on sale in my Etsy shop, chain included:

This is my first excursion into selling handmade stuff on Etsy. We’ll see how it goes.

Broken amber earring is now… a bracelet

I debated whether or not to turn the broken amber and silver earring into a pendant, but couldn’t find a suitable jump ring (it needed a flattened, oval one rather than a round one IMO). So I hit on the idea of turning it into a bracelet. I had to break off the silver “pad” that would have been opposite the bit of the clip that clamps down on your earlobe. (This needed some care as silver is a soft metal and it was hard to make the pad shear off without distorting the rest of the earring. I just about managed it though.)

Then I filed down the two stumps where the pad had been and where the clip had broken off. I found a fine gauge silver charm bracelet, cut it in half, removed a few of the links on each of the two halves, and inserted the earring in the middle using a couple of small 0.8 mm gauge silver jump rings. Voilà!

Update: the 0.8 mm jump rings turned out to be too flimsy (nearly lost the bracelet while out shopping), so I substituted a pair of 1.0 mm jump rings instead.

Oops. What to do with broken amber earring?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here – I’ve been busy and my Etsy shop has been doing better than it’s ever done before, so all my efforts have been concentrated there. Now it’s February, and sales have gone down. They always do go down in February. My theory is that the buying public is still spending money in January, because they have an Etsy gift card, or a cash gift from Aunt Jane to use up. Come February, the gift cards are just a memory and people realise that yes, they really do owe that much on their credit card and any discretionary spending is going to have to wait till payday.

This month I had a rare trip to Canterbury to browse the local charity shops. I like going to Canterbury, but its charity shops – while great to browse around – don’t tend to yield that much in the way of affordable shop items. I was however delighted to find these Celtic beauties, made from sterling silver and amber:

On getting them home, I noticed that the clip was misaligned on one of the earrings, so I tried gently bending it to get it in place. Sadly, it snapped right off, leaving a stump. Oops.

I will have to think about what I want to do with the broken earring, because it’s too nice to scrap.

Garnet choker (a tale of two necklaces part 2)

I’ve done something with the two necklaces I described in this post. All the garnets have been pooled together, along with a handful of garnet beads I had left over from an earlier project, to create this choker:

garnetbeadnecklace

The resulting necklace was about 16 inches long (i.e. too short for me) so I extended it a bit with some silver chain. The great thing about this necklace, apart from the lovely texture and colour of the garnets, is that it’s an ideal partner for pendants with a very large bale. The pendant stays put without slipping, and looks better (IMO) than it would on a thin chain.

Here’s me wearing the necklace:

garnetbeadnecklace2

A new take on the button bracelet

This bracelet is something I made a while ago, as an experiment. I had this gorgeous, translucent Art Deco plastic button in a striking shade of cerise, with a gold-painted geometric motif. I wanted to incorporate it into a bracelet, but I couldn’t think how to make it work. Then I hit on an idea – make a button bracelet that only needed one button, and make the button act as fastener and focal point at the same time.

So I got a length of that cord stuff that is used to make piping for cushions, and covered it in black velvet. Then I bent one end back into a loop, and sewed the button at the other end. Bingo. It’s extremely comfortable to wear and can readily be stacked with other bracelets.

velvetbuttonbracelet

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velvetbuttonbracelet2

Art Nouveau silver dragonfly thing repurposed into a necklace


This necklace is something I actually made several years ago, using some silver chain, a couple of jump rings and this stunning silver and enamel focal piece. I found it at a local boot fair for £2.50. The dragonfly and flower design is typical of the Art Nouveau period, and this is borne out by the hallmark – London 1898. The maker’s initials are PJB – no idea who that was (any information gratefully received). I have no idea what the focal piece was originally used for – whether it was jewellery or an ornament of some kind. The enamel is – to put it politely – knackered, but it it still looks stunning and in its new incarnation as a necklace, is one of my favourite pieces to wear.

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