Tag Archives: repurposing

ID bracelet gets a refit

I had a stunningly good day’s hunting in the local charity shops the other day. One of the items I bought was this silver bead thingy, set with a tiny opal. I wanted to create a piece of jewellery out of it and settled on making it into a bracelet.

None of the spare bits of silver chain I had were any good – they were either too flimsy, too short or simply the wrong kind of chain.

Then I remembered I had this silver ID bracelet:

One end of the central panel was starting to detach from the chain and the panel itself was (a) scratched and (b) had a faint, illegible engraving on it, so the bracelet was no good from a reselling point of view. I clipped out the panel and replaced it with my bead, using pairs of jump rings of 2.5 mm diameter and 0.8 mm thickness. It was an extremely fiddly job, but I’m quite pleased with the result:

It can be worn on its own or stacked with other thin bracelets/bangles. Not bad for £1!

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.

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.

Mookaite necklace: upcycling project in waiting

I found this rather lovely necklace in the Pilgrim’s Hospice today – it cost me all of £1:

I’m pretty sure the big beads are all made of mookaite, a type of jasper that is mined in Australia. I adore the big, pebbly beads with their smooth surface and warm shades of plum and gold. However, I’m not keen on the small chips or the goldtone spacer beads. So I’m thinking that the big beads could be made into a Lola Rose-esque bracelet (or maybe even two bracelets). I already have the waxed cotton cord, so I’m good to go. And all for a quid.

Micromosaic panel: a small piece of Italy

Last week, I spent 50p on this rather lovely fragment of micromosaic that I found in a charity shop on Northdown Road:

Once upon a time, it would have formed part of a bracelet with several more identical panels of micromosaic. But sadly these have all been lost.

One end has a loop, while the other is a sort of elongated C-shape that would have hooked onto the loop of the next panel. If I could convert this end into another loop, I’d be able to thread some waxed cord through both ends and thus create another bracelet out of just this one piece. If I’m successful, there will be another post and more pictures.

Cameo pendant repurposed from brooch with missing pin


I found this lovely brooch for a pound at the local church jumble sale. I’m guessing it’s continental silver but there are no hallmarks. Sadly, the pin has broken off, leaving two stumps – one being the clasp (itself missing a roller catch) and the other being the hinge where the pin was attached. The original pin would have been riveted/soldered into the hinge and there’s no way that I could have replaced it myself. So I’ve converted the brooch into a pendant, by removing the safety wire and using the loop at the top as a bale. I also cut off the clasp with a pair of pliers, and filed the stump down so that it was smooth. From the front, you would never know that this was once a brooch.

Repurposed pendant made from a Victorian brooch



I bought a job lot of silver bits a while back, one of which was a Victorian brooch with some lovely engraving featuring cannabis-like leaves and a little bird. Unfortunately the pin had come off, leaving the C-clasp behind, plus a rough blob of solder where the pin had joined onto the back. I used a pair of pliers to curl the C-clasp and form a closed loop, and then bent the loop back so that it was near-parallel to the surface of the brooch. Then I added a jump ring. I used the file that had come with my new silver testing kit to smooth off the solder. So here is the result, front and back:

The back looks less than ideal but at least it’s reasonably smooth – and I made a pendant from something that would have ended up lying in a drawer or being sold for scrap.

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.

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A tale of two necklaces – garnets and pearls

I bought these two necklaces (below) from different charity shops, within about a week of each other. Total cost: less than £4. Necklace no. 1 has a goldtone toggle fastening, some nice looking real pearls and faceted garnets (at least, they look like garnets. Definitely not plastic or glass). Necklace no. 2 has some decidedly uninteresting metal beads, plus a silvertone fastening. And more garnets. I’m thinking that I might cannibalise the two necklaces and create one single necklace just out of garnets. The pearls would make a nice stretch bracelet for stacking with other bracelets. The metal hardware can be given back to the charity shop.

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And here’s a close-up:

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