In response to a challenge! CAN beautiful bibs and bobs be transformed into lovely pieces of jewelry, in a timely fashion, and sold for $20 and under? This page will PROVE it. $20 and under DOES NOT have to look like dollar store jewelry. It DOES NOT have to look like a mass-produced trend. It DOES NOT have to look like unimaginative department store boxed goods....Handmade CAN be attractive, textural, appealing, one of a kind and CERTAINLY!! under $20.
Date(s): December 10, 2002. Album by Brenda Sue Lansdowne. 1 - 15 of 22 Total. 2292 Visits.
I love them all! These are some of the most beautiful pieces of Jewelry I have ever seen! Some-day, I hope to create jewelry 1/2 as nice as this! I'm learning a lot from the group, hopefully that will help....lol, Nancy/Alleycats_jewelry - Nancy, Thu, 27 Feb 2003 10:35PM
1 dsn656 Stippled brass ox back, vintage W. German glass handpainted cameo, and bits of busted rhinestone jewelry I had lying about. There is more like $5 in this because of the glass cameo.
2 dsn659 The photo is crummy. In person it's a real beaut, about 3.5 inches or longer....made of busted rhinestone earrings, My MONA cab on a silverplated cameo mount, collaged around the side with tiny inexpensive tiara spray findings from my site, accented with some stray Czech vintage stones. Took me about twenty minutes to make, and I'd say, retail, if you were to make it, you'd have $5-6 in it....and some imagination!
3 bonzai37 I made this a long time ago when I was doing shows. We made maybe 8 in this style, all sold for $20 area. There is a large filagree back and the big 25mm TTC stone, other than that, it's just bits of pearls and flatbacks and a few filagree leaves. You'd only have $5 tops, retail, in it.
4 bonzai331e Hard to see, but it's a pretty nouveau style lady head glued to a filagree and used as a centerpiece....we used some vintage and inexpensive Czech firepolish beads for the necklace and drops. It took 20 minutes to make. It cost us maybe 3.50. It sold for 15.00.
5 bonzai360e Thyme in a Garden....a best seller from my old gift line. It's 2.5 inches tall, and cost us 2.25 retail at that time to make, plus piecework, which was 1.50....they took ten minutes to make, but we did them assembly line style. Stores sold them for 15.95-17.95 depending on their markup system. We sold them for $8 wholesale. That WAS too cheap.
6 bonzai357e A piece of rare dresden enamel and three bisque roses. Honestly it would be hard for anyone to duplicate and the dresden was valuable (shucks---be careful what you use)....but I didn't have so much into it.....maybe $4 retail. Sold for $15.00 and took ten minutes to make.
7 bonzai 174 For the horsey set, we copper-spray painted the raw brass mount, used some rhinestone chain and a relatively inexpensive horse cameo along with some inexpensive vintage leaves and pearls that cost next to nada. There is maybe $3.50 in this one, took fifteen minutes of my time, and sold for 15.00.
8 bonzai327e Actually my son Jordan made this from some stray beads rolling around in the bottom of the drawer....all Czech glass. Took him fifteen minutes, maybe 4.00 in it and we sold it for 16.00, if I remember correctly.
9 bonzai44 Anni used to make these little bugs for me off a 50 cent finding, 50 cents worth of flatbacks and maybe 2.50 worth of rhinestone chain. They required about 15 minutes of her time, and sold for $20.
10 bonzai335e Stray jet and crystal glass 8-10mm beads, stray bobs of rolo that were left over from projects, and a really great looking pendant, which occasionally I do bring in to sell. The pendant is $5 by itself, but the rest is scrap-stray material. It took maybe ten-fifteen minutes to hook up. This would sell $18-20 for me.
11 bonzai342e You have to have the right market for button collage because alot of people will say, HEY! I have a whole big can of buttons at home. I'll just hot glue them up. ACK!!! I'll say. Go ahead and watch it fall apart too! LOL Positioning is important, the right glue paramount, and on found item collage I classicly always use my lacquer, too. I rarely ever do JUST buttons....usually they are combined with leaves and pearls as you see here. This one cost me maybe 3.00 to make; and I think I still have it, it would sell $14-15.00.
12 bonzai328s A lush arrangement of a few wedding cake lamps and textured Czech glass beads with metallized plastic flower spacer beads. Three row coil, I had maybe $5 in it and sold it for $18.00 Who wouldn't like to receive such a pretty thing for a gift? We sold 20-30 of these every show we did.
13 beaut8 Handtinted flowers we did bath style, pearlies and inexpensive Czech firepolish. Normally we'd get $20 for these, but I recall I sold this one for $12.00 to move it out....let's face it, not everyone is a big fan of grass green!
14 bonzai57 Five row coil of stray beads from the bottom of the drawer...we all have them. Little cheapy saturns and firepolish with a few lamp beads, nothing expensive here, made in five minutes for under five bucks. Sold for $18.00 and nice to use up those beads.
15 bonzai302e The engraving is hard to see in an internet photo, but it's hand engraved, BUTTON BUTTON. Made from my line of old pearl shirt buttons, raw brass which we sealed and inexpensive accent material. These could be made for 2.50 retail, and sold for 14.95.
