Fire In the Belly: YOJ wk27: Simple Elements

Another Simple Elements Necklace, this time inspired by Deborah (a.k.a. Sneekbead).


This morning I popped in to see the latest inspirational offerings here at the year of jewelry project and found Deborah's Phoenix Necklace. I gotta tell you Deb, I caught my breath when I saw it! I *loved* the look of the oblong rectangular stone with the netted cap. I had some sort of plain-ish agate tongues like this and I just couldn't figure out what to do with them to save my life - but I've been itching to make *something* with them. When I saw Deb's pendant I knew what I wanted to do with those agate tongues. :) I had actually experimented with this netting idea back in the initial YOJ project, week 49 with just a flat tumbled piece of Montana Agate. It turned out so-so and I told myself at the time that I would experiment more with this technique but never really picked it up again until today. My technique is really primitive compared to what I've seen going around since Eni created a tut for the netted top drilled beads/briolettes. I thought that using a drilled bead might make it a little easier on me and I might even do better this time. Honestly though, I think my first attempt might have been at least a little better than this one even though it had a bit of an awkward start. Maybe I should drop the $ and get Eni's tut to help me refine my netting skills? :D Of course a little practice could be in order, eh? lol

Either way, this is not a complicated necklace at all, and it's certainly not perfect, but I'm really beginning to like this Simple Elements concept. Nothing that I did to make this necklace took more than a few minutes to do and then I was able to put them all together fairly quickly. The end result is a simplistic necklace with just the right amount of detail to be eye catching. No excess here, but that's what I dig about it. :D

So there you have my entry for week 27, Fire in the Belly.