Blooming Beauty necklace
A complicated necklace for an upcoming exhibition. I started forming flower shapes and assembling all my textured petals and leaves that I'd already been experimenting with. I melted pieces of scrap silver to make tiny balls for the centre of some of the flowers and for the others used show-stopping opals cut at my lapidary club.
I made some curly hooks at each side for the chain to join. I like the fastening being part of the design, not hidden away at the back so I made them look like delicate tendrils continuing the theme.
Stunning emerald light captured in the earthy brown of this boulder opal.
So hard to photograph the ever-changing colours of opal, this one is pink is some light...
...and pale green in others.
This opal set on the dangling leaves is milky but glints with multiple sparks of colour.
Those amazing colours again.
I had to include a picture of the back which took almost as long as the front! I really didn't want any of the fastenings to be seen from the front so it took some careful positioning. The necklace is linked together in three movable sections with shaped wire following the design of the flowers in the most unobtrusive way. I like that it has some movement with each part and also with the hanging leaves.
Ah the early stages... it took me ages to decide the design, which flower next to which? That was before I'd given much thought to how to actually connect them...