As most crafters I love taking something old and turning it into something new and different, but I especially love being able to use old items that have special meaning. My husband's grandmother recently passed away and we were given a ton of her old costume jewelry for my daughter to play with. As a typical four year old girl, she is obsessed with anything that sparkles and loved all of the "diamonds" so I started thinking of ways I could re-purpose some of the jewelry. Abby chose a wooden unfinished butterfly on our last trip to Michael's as a piece to add to her "wall" that I'm working on, so I used that as my inspiration.
First I painted it white:
Then I chose some of the focal pieces including the faux pearl bracelet for the body and the large clip-on earrings for the wings.
I pulled off the back of the earrings and fit them to each wing. The bottom part of the top wing I had to tear apart a bracelet and form it using a mosaic effect.
Then I painted the outer wings bright pink. I lined the bottom wings with a long necklace that I just glued into place. The antennae were made from two piece that were accents on the bracelet and I thought it was a cute touch.
And here is my final result:
I know it isn't perfect, but I really love the final piece. My daughter is in love with the bright pink and the sparkles and I love that a piece of her great-grandmother will be looking over her every night. Even though she won't grow up knowing her great-grandma, Abby will see this and we will remember to talk about those who have loved us and made us who we are. It is these things that make a house a home and make crafting so much fun for me! I actually found few ideas on pinterest for ways to transform vintage jewelry (outside of adding to clothes or making other jewelry) but I think there are tons of ways you could disassemble special pieces and add them to your projects. If anyone comes up with other ideas, please share!
No comments:
Post a Comment