Vintage Treasures!

This past weekend, the ArtChix had an art and artisan jewelry sale. During some of the down time, one of the ArtChix brought out two huge bags of vintage beads and jewelry to sort through. What fun! She is a member of the DAR and they are involved in a service project, working with the schools, and selling this donated jewelry/beads is part of their fundraiser for this project. So, for a donation, I had the extreme pleasure of sorting through both bags and choosing lots of treasures to turn into modern jewelry with vintage charm. We sat for two hours remarking things like "look at this...I can make three pairs of earrings from this one bracelet", etc.

I am always torn, when receiving vintage jewelry, between leaving them as they are or tearing them apart to modernize them to be worn today. I usually lean towards making them wearable today since I think these treasures deserve to be worn instead of stored in boxes in a closet. Add to that the fact that I (and I think many others) cannot bear the discomfort of wearing screw-back earrings with my pierced ears so something has to be done about that! The workmanship, even in the costume jewelry, is amazing by today's standards and I just marvel at that.

Here are the first few I have been working on, I just could not wait one day past the weekend! I might also add that I don't think these will be available on my sale tables since I like them so well I want them for myself. I will have to be less greedy than this as I work through these treasure bags and make more jewelry from them since I do want to sell (I mean share!) them with others who enjoy the vintage looks as much as I do.

 This is a lovely old brooch, all metal settings, done in black metal of some sort. One of the larger stones was out of the setting, but it was found in the bag of mixed beads and jewels (phew!) and I repaired it, cleaned up the brooch, removed the brooch pin, made a bail for it and hung it from a black neck wire ring. Cool, huh?

These were my fav's before I even got them home! Look at that filigree on the long drop earrings! Do you see why I am keeping these?! The rhinestone earrings were taken from a choker necklace where these were some of the focal pieces. Thankfully, I was able to snap them from the rest of the stones cleanly and add the posts to them without incident. These are now all on posts. Lovely filigree silver in these.


Stay tuned as I continue to work my way through these bags and make these treasures from the past into Fav's for Today!