Wedding Jewelry

Along with helping to craft the wedding I was also in charge of making the wedding jewelry.  I had made the jewelry for other weddings but this time it was different.  I usually made the brides maids bracelets in the wedding colors.  But the bride wanted pearl necklaces in an unusual design.  The right side of the necklace was double stranded and on the left connected to a decorative clasp and then became a single stranded necklace.  The difficult part was that I couldn't find ornate enough clasps.  So I looked for buttons and brooches.  I finally found a beautiful bow brooch with lovely rhinestones.  But it didn't seem right making the same necklace for everyone in the wedding party.  After ordering the supplies it was decided to have no bridesmaids.  Which was actually better because then I could really make different styles!  Here is my niece on her big day.

My nieces picture at the chapel

Close up of the necklace

Here you see the whole necklace.

I had a few problems at first.  The stringing wire was not strong enough so it fell apart.  Once I switched to heavier wire it worked great.  My sister sat and strung the beads again and was the major influence of how lovely it came out.  In order for the pin to go over the pearls I was going to connect the strands to the back of the pin using small pearls under the pin so it wasn't to bulky.  My sister wanted the necklace to be interchangable with different pins.  I had thought of that design but didn't know how to get the pin on over the pearls.  My sister suggested trying to use the small pearls and then pin over them.  That worked!  So now my niece can get different looks to the necklace by using other pins.  After I got it together my niece had me adjust the length three times and it was perfect!

You may have noticed that the brides flowers and handmade paper flowers.  That is another story!

If you would like to see more pictures of the wedding crafts visit my sister's blog http://paperplates-pjbeach.blogspot.com/