Jewelry With a Mystery History

With almost every waking moment devoted to painting walls this past week, I've had plenty of time to dream up new mosaic pendant designs while pushing a paint roller. Here's one of those ideas brought to life:

"Bejeweled" mosaic pendant     ©2019 Lynn Edwards

This pendant was created in part from a fragment taken from a vintage necklace I discovered in a Virginia Goodwill store. The rather elaborate necklace was broken and was being sold as part of a jewelry odd lot. The fragment I used forms the pendant's central motif. I've surrounded it with glass "pearls" to give it a Victorian look.



What I found quite interesting about it is the mysterious blue stones seen at the top and in the middle of the pendant. They're a beautiful, very unusual shade of blue - really impossible to describe. For a touch of whimsy I topped the large faceted glass "topaz" with a tiny decorative leaf, and gave the design a background of lustrous metallic copper. Set in a silver bezel, it fits right in with the current fashion trend of mixing different metals.

I think of this piece as being "bejeweled," something a queen might wear. Who knows? Perhaps that found necklace was once in the wardrobe of a lady of royal ancestry. It's fun to speculate, even if I'll never know its actual history.

To see more one of a kind pendants, visit my web site, http://www.lynnedwardsart.com.

Text and image ©2019 Lynn Edwards

Up with Downsizing!

The Great Mosaic Opus -- a 19x40 inch tabletop with "tiles" made from hand painted heavy watercolor paper -- was finally finished after months of hand painting, cutting, fitting and gluing down what seemed like ten million paper tiles. (See my two previous posts for the actual how-to information.)

Now what? Where should my next creative exploration take me? Contemplating this question, I realized I didn't want to move on to some other medium. I wanted to continue working in mosaics, but I was not up for taking on another project as extensive as the table top.

The answer came when my friend Karen invited me to her house to see some pendants she had made. Mosaic pendants! I took one look at them and was smitten. I've made lots of jewelry, but I had never made anything like these little treasures. Glass tiles in rich hues gleamed, "popping" against the black grout, while an array of carefully placed beads and baubles completed her designs, all set into attractive bezels. I was itching to learn how to make them. When Karen generously offered to teach me her process, I jumped at it.

So my mosaic addiction has now shifted in scale, from large projects to small ones. This has allowed me even more freedom to indulge ... Immersion might describe it more accurately. It has become my obsession. I can't get enough of it.
Here are two pendants I've made recently. You can see others on my web site, www.lynnedwardsart.com

Text, images and pendant designs ©2019 Lynn Edwards