Fusion Beads 30 Day Bead Challenge: Day 11

Day 11 in Fusion Beads' celebration of National Craft Month brought the challenge of working with found objects.  I really enjoyed this one.  I love combing the beaches, scouring the woodland trails and perusing the city sidewalks in search of treasures.  I have boxes and boxes of things that I have found over the years.

To start this project, I had to narrow down what I wanted to use.  I have a massive amount of beach glass and ocean tumbled stones.  I also have a wide assortment of seed pods and bones.  But what was I going to use?

I decided to zero in on the thimble found in a creek in Asheville and a crab claw found on Coney Island.  Already there were some condition issues.  The thimble was smashed and the crab claw was delicate and the coloring was temporary.  With each passing year, it has gotten more brittle and bleached out.  The solution to these problems came with straightening out the thimble, reinforcing and sealing the claw with glue, and then painting everything once the glue was dry.

So, the above picture is a little deceiving.  I wanted to handle the fragile factor by encasing the claw in resin.  I also wanted to take pictures of the pendant to showcase it on the blog, but I knew that if I poured resin, it wouldn't be a good option to move it around a bunch.  I'll pour the resin later.

The box that the claw is in, is one that I made from copper sheeting.  I used simple fold-forming techniques to put it together.

From the box, I hung the thimble on as an almost bead cap tassel.  At the ends of the chains, I used wire-wrapped dangles to complete the look.

To make the pendant cluster really pop, I paired the pieces with a simple, short chain.

I'm quite pleased with the end result and will make more of these little industrial, reliquary boxes.

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