A Holiday Gift

I really like my son’s girlfriend; they both spend time with me over the holiday season. For this holiday (we celebrate both Hanukah and Christmas), I decided to make Mariya a necklace. Her favorite color is lilac or light purple, and I happened to have a lovely lilac chalcedony cabochon to use for the pendant. Because they are in love, I used, as a motif, entwined hearts. The picture below shows my original sketch.

Now that I know where I’m going with the design, I do several things: first, I make the bezel setting for the stone, pick out the pearls I will place onto the pendant, and then draft the pattern. Below is a photo of the drafted pattern, the cabochon in its bezel and the pearls — a bit fuzzy, I apologize.

Now I have the pattern, and first, I figure out what gauge (diameter size, basically) I need for the “hearts.” I took out some copper wire that approximated the size I wanted and begin to fashion the four major pieces of the hearts. Once I’m comfortable with the process for fabrication, I take out sterling silver wire, inspect various sizes, and then pick out the gauge I want. I begin to fabricate the hearts, and in this case, I made notches in the wire so that the wires will sit nicely on top of one another. The picture below shows the wires as fabricated and placed in position and next to the pattern.

To complete the pendant, I will add round disks with posts for the pearls to sit on, a jump ring on the top of the pendant so that it will hang from the rest of the necklace and another jump ring so the pendant will hang correctly. The picture below shows the work-in-process, and you can see how the pendant is coming together.

After completing the fabrication of the pendant, I worked on the chain for the necklace. Time was running out, and rather than make a chain similar to the ones in Gene and Ava, I decided to make a simpler chain using beads and pearls that are wired. Using amethyst beads and rondelles, freshwater pearls, Bali spacers, and sterling beads, I designed a repeating motif. Using math, I then figured out how many motifs I needed for the length of the necklace. The photo below shows the motif and my mathematical figuring.

I wired up the beads and other materials into a chain, added a commercially available chain so the necklace would be adjustable and an end piece, so to speak. Below is a picture of the nearly complete gift; all that I needed to do to finish was to wire up the ends of the chain to the pendant.

I believe Mariya liked her gift; she wore it several times during their stay.