With so many silver beads and charms around me, sometimes I feel silly for wanting more. I often make requests for a shape or image I want and hope that customers call and email saying they would like the same thing so that it might get produced. I’ve learned, however, that the easiest way for me to satisfy my craving for new and exciting items is to gold plate them. I also love oxidizing silver for a less expensive alteration. It is amazing how much the feel of an item can change by switching up the color of the metal.
Recently a customer had the small elephant bead gold plated. I loved it so much I sent some out with our next gold plate order even though I didn’t know how I was going to work with them. When my elephant beads returned from the platers it was a Friday and I rushed home with a couple feet of silver chain to make something special to wear that night. I was going to just space the five elephants out on the chain and oxidize the chain to make them pop. I realized after I cut the chain to the spacing I liked that I didn’t want my middle elephant to lay on his side so I dug through my bead collection to work around not having any headpins handy. I found a small green teardrop agate, a discontinued Nina Designs bead and with a few small gemstones made one of my most favorite necklaces to date.
To read more on how you can have any of our silver items plated in 24K gold, please see our Gold Special Order Policy.
Inspired Elephant Necklace
Detail of Elephant Drop
Detail of Elephant Beads
These are awesome!
Comment by Stacy Cohen — January 6, 2010 @ 11:37 am