Crafts of another variety

A few years ago, I stumbled across a pretty green and red garnet necklace at a craft fair. I hadn’t seen green garnets before, and the whole combination just screamed my mother’s name at me. Her favorite color is green, and she wears a lot of shades of green, brown, rust, and brick reds, so the colors in the necklace would go with at least half of her wardrobe. I scooped it up and gave it to her for Mother’s Day. She loved it. She loved it so much, she asked if I could find out who made it and see if I could get earrings to match it.

Easier said than done. I did finally manage to track down the person who’d made the necklace, but she didn’t have any more green garnets. She had some other stones that were a similar color, but they were a different shape. I decided that I was going to have to hunt down some green garnets myself. I found some at a bead shop near my house. They were slightly smaller than the ones used in my mom’s necklace, but the color matched perfectly, and I was able to find some matching red garnet beads as well.

My mom didn’t like the clasp that had been used to secure the necklace, so I figured I could restring the necklace, replace the clasp, and while I was at it, I could substitute some of the new (slightly smaller) beads for two of the larger beads, which I could then combine with some of the new red and green garnet beads to make earrings. I had to purchase a string of each color of the garnets, so I had plenty of stones left over to make a matching double-stranded bracelet as well. So I finished the set up and gave it to my mom while she was visiting this past weekend. She was tickled.

While she was here, we stopped into the local Michaels and found ourselves in the jewelry aisle. My mom picked up some pretty blue sodalite stones and commented that she just couldn’t find jewelry with blue stones that was set with gold. So in short order, we found some gold beads that would go with the sodalite, and before she left on Monday, I made her a bracelet and earring set. (I have a few sodalite stones left, so I am going to play around with a necklace, too. Shhhh!)

And as long as I had all my jewelry-making supplies out, I made a few more stitch markers. These were just simple silver jump rings with a seed bead glued over the seam of the jump ring, so there’s nothing to catch on your yarn. Nothing too fancy and quick and easy to make. They’ve already been put to use on the Scalloped Lace Baby Sweater!