Honk If You Love Car Parts!

Who doesn't love a good flea market?

Pasadena's Rose Bowl Flea Market, held once a month, is a treasure trove of goodies for jewelry makers. When I stroll through flea markets, thrift stores, collectibles shops, and so on, I keep an eye out for bargains that can be turned into nontraditional jewelry components.

This necklace is a fine example.

I scrounged a magnetic metal letter "P" from a bowl of auto bits and pieces at one dealer's booth a couple of years ago. Although I didn't have an immediate vision for it, I liked it and knew it held possibilities. One would have been a fridge magnet, for instance. Another would be holding important papers on the front of my file cabinet or as a gift tag on a wrapped present.

This necklace came about from upcycled parts: an old ball chain and the thrifted letter, joined by a simple (strong) jump ring. It's a fun nod to automotive interests and old-model cars and a unisex jewelry piece.

What do you have sitting around that would make an interesting piece of jewelry?

Recycled Halloween?

My crafty crafter friends, if you have vinyl/vulcanite disk beads (from recycled record album material! How cool is that?), here's a fun bracelet to make for Halloween. :-) This idea is easy to adapt for any season or holiday, too. Just vary the vinyl disk color. (You can do this with sequins as well--stack them on memory wire. They appear almost translucent.) I buy these vinyl disk beads at happymangobeads.com.

Old Playing Cards: Check. . .

After several days off from jewelry-making, I've been rarin' to get going again. I'd put together some things, but nothing really grabbed me. So, yesterday, on a jaunt to Jo-Ann's, I picked up a copy of Belle Armoire magazine for ideas.

The current issue has some great pieces! One of them incorporates pieces of playing cards in bezels under a crackle resin. That got to me to thinking. . .

. . . and half a day later, I have a new bracelet that actually does grab me. I took some stray playing cards, a length of old wire-wrapped glass pearls (with the pearl finish worn off in places), a bezel bracelet I bought on sale last year, and some loose beads from my stash.

Pieces of the cards went into the bezels and under a layer of resin. Meanwhile, I wire-wrapped glass hearts and black beads. When I checked the resin, I was a bit dismayed to see that bubbles had remained stubbornly intact in one of the bezels, despite my efforts to pop them with a piece of wire. I found a bag of loose rhinestones, new and old, that I'd gotten in a big bag of jewelry odds and ends at a thrift shop; one flat-backed rhinestone became a beauty mark to disguise the air bubbles on the jack's cheek. I added the dangles I'd made, a magnetic clasp, and. . .

"Deal Me In!"

This bracelet measures just over 8". Thinking about listing it on etsy or else taking it to a local shop to see if the owner would like to display it for sale.