I MADE JEWELRY!!!!!

Well, I've never made any kind of jewelry before... unless you count the friendship bracelets I made back in the 80's when I was a kid.  But, this is my first attempt at Prince Diamonds' brooches.  He wears four of them and 3 appear to hold his cape in place.  

You can see the brooch detail in the upper right corner.

 I'll probably find a better way to attach the cape and the brooches will be purely decorative.  But I'm super stoked how this first one came out.  Now I just need to make 3 more, but I wrote down everything I did so I can make the rest exactly the same (Hmm.... I smell a tutorial.)

Just a quick run down of what I used.  The diamonds are glass paperweights I found at Hobby Lobby.  They were on sale for 50% off so they were only $2.00 each.  The acrylic jewels that Hobby Lobby had looked cheap... however I know that there are other brands of acrylics that look really nice.  

I used gold glass seed beads and 28 gauge gold wire for all of the bead work and I made the pattern into kind of a fishnet pattern -- which you can see through the diamond and that's really cool.  I also like how it kinda mimics the petals of a flower... it's a nice motif that'll tie in to the Indian influence of the design.

Last I added an acrylic tear drop crystal to finish it.  I'm not sure how I'm going to attach these to the cape yet, but I'll probably just sew them on.  I think the wire will be strong enough to support the weight of the glass diamond.  

Here's more pictorial goodness!

No Flash

The back detail

See, you can see the beads through the stone.

Bling Bling!

Jason