I Came, I Saw, I Made My Own (II)

I have a bit of a Thing about pomegranates. I always have, and when I joined the SCA, I made the pomegranate my symbol.  It's on my heraldry, many of my personal items that I've made, like boxes and bags, and in a lot of my jewelry, too, in every way I can get it.

So when I saw this on Pinterest, I HAD TO HAVE IT:

22 carat, hollow beads with a pomegranate pendant
Persia, 500BC

It's far earlier than SCA-period; but it's still GORGEOUS.  And people have always loved antiques and ancient things, so, I'm going with it. ;) 

While I do a lot of beading and wire work, I have zero experience with casting jewelry - and no materials which which to do so.  But I've been meaning lately to learn to work with modeling clay, and I figured beads MUST be easy, and probably a decent starter project.  They were a wee bit more challenging that I thought, mostly having to do with getting the holes right, but they came out pretty well: 

I formed them around some sort of knitting tool (it was in a starter kit I was given once, but I never learned to knit, and I have no clue what it's supposed to be).  It sure made a great bead mandrel, though. It might be just as useful for knitting, but for now it's the first tool in my clay kit, hehe. 

About a third of the beads I made came apart when I tried to push a needle through them the first time.  I ended up making a second round of beads, and a bunch extra - and it's a good thing, too, because while stringing them up I realized that the first round was really not nearly as many as I needed!

After all were done and baked, I spray-painted them gold, and strung them on a length of embroidery floss.  I ended up spacing them out with green glass beads, because my clay beads weren't as pointed as the ones in the inspiration pic, and it looked weird having them all butted up against one another.

YAY!  I LOVE the way this came out! 

Here's the necklace on my dress dummy (Violet, who is in serious need of re-adustment, but we'll get to that in another post), along with a red...secret project...that I'll start discussing some time next week.

Stay tuned!


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