Saturday Share - Necklace Tweak

So, a few Saturday Share posts ago, I challenged folks to finish an unfinished, languishing, pitiful piece that you forgot about, or were stuck, or were perhaps procrastinating on.  A couple of you answered my challenge and showed your results...Bravo!  In my case, I finished a piece that I had set aside for a while, having created copper and torch-fired enamel elements to coordinate with gorgeous SueBeads I had been hoarding.  If you recall, I wasn't really happy with the end results...I sort of rushed to get it together so that I could actually write about it here, but it wasn't my best work.

Here is the original...I got such wonderful comments and suggestions from you guys...thank you! There was too much negative space, or at least the negative space that is there is boring..sort of sterile...a pity, since I love the colors I chose and the layered enamel with Sue's gorgeous lampwork really works.

So, I pulled the necklace back out and started playing. Part of me wanted to completely tear it apart and redo, unfortunately the flowers are layered and wired onto the base frame, so that would entail redoing everything.  One of the suggestions on the original post was to bend the frame so that it wasn't so "straight" and linear.  That is what I tried first.

Wow, just a little tweak of the wire to take it out of the straight line really made a difference.  I re-formed the loop for the clasp as well.  Oh, I also 86'd the czech glass dangles...they were too distracting and didn't hang the way I wanted.  Still, not quite right.

Anothe great suggestion was to fill the negative space with something...I liked the vining suggestion, so I made some copper headpins with balls on both ends.  I wrapped them around the smaller flowers, then coiled them around my round nose pliers, then pulled them out and positioned them to fill in...I decided one would look cute om the lampwork blossom dangle. At this point I debated adding the czech glass flower dangles back in, or perhaps adding some of my leftover lampwork into the chain, but I finally decided against it.  Something still wasn't right, though.

As a last tweak, I curled the ends of the base in a bit more, so there wasn't so much dead space between where the chain/clasp attached and the flowers...much better!

Here's the before and after again...

Before...

and After!

Thanks for your comments and suggestions! I'm very happy with the necklace now...I still need to make earrings!

So, Happy Saturday...go tweak a piece you are not happy with!!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.