The bird necklace

The last featured necklace this week is one I made for a friend.  I think of it as “the bird necklace”.  I like the juxtaposition of the red and the natural wood and ivory.

 

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This necklace is made from button/craft thread, unfinished wooden beads, a vintage button, and an ivory bird that I recycled from a vintage necklace.  You can find this thread very inexpensively at any large fabric store.  I think it costs a little more than a dollar and comes in nine colors.  It’s very strong and thicker than normal thread.  I used red, and I pulled it across a cake of beeswax several times, and then ironed it with a scrap of old t-shirt around it as a press cloth to strengthen it further and prevent it from tangling.  You could skip this step, but if you choose to do it, make sure to use a press cloth to protect your iron and ironing board (some of the dye from the thread came off on the cloth).  The beads are the same unfinished wooden beads I used in this post.  The bird, which I think is ivory (but I don’t really know) was from a necklace filled with small beads and birds that I got at a flea market.  It was a great necklace, but those little bird beaks were constantly poking me in the neck.  I decided they could be put to a better use, so I cut the necklace apart and sanded down the little beak just a bit for this necklace.

To make the necklace, I put the beads and the bird on the waxed thread in a pleasing arrangement, and then threaded the ends of the thread through the button a few times and tied a bow.  This way it can be untied and the length can be adjusted, if necessary.

You could make a necklace like this from any odds and ends you have around or that you find in craft stores and flea markets.  Here’s one of my finds from this summer that I hope to turn into…something.

Do you know what these are?  I didn’t, but I liked the graffic numbers and the material made me think of Bakelite (although I don’t know if it is Bakelite or not).

Guess what I found out about them?  They’re cow tags!  I didn’t grow up on a farm, so this was news to me.   The lady I bought them from said the previous owner was a farmer who used the tags to remember which cows he had milked.

What do you think I should do with them?  Earrings, maybe?  😉

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