rock it

In the introduction in one of my favourite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, main character Joel Barish walks on the beach, and says: "sand is overrated. It's just tiny, little rocks".

I have loved those words since I first saw the movie, and I was reminded of them when we were in Crete.

Crete is beautiful for many, many reasons, but the beaches are definitely one of them. I don't think I even need to explain: look at the picture above, taken at a silent beach at the Libyan sea. Have you ever seen such vibrant colours? All those tiny, little rocks!

How is possible that all these grains of sand and little stones where once part of massive rocks and mountains, eroded by the elements, and tossed around for thousand of miles, for thousands of years, to end up on a desolate beach in the south of Crete?

I was mesmerized by all the colours, so I did, what I have always done since I was a little girl: I collected small rocks and pebbles and took them home with me.

So this was the stash that I smuggled back to the Netherlands!

pretty!

I really wanted to do something with them, and since Sinterklaas was coming on and I needed to make some gifts (I know, I'm a month late with this post..) I figured that it should be possible to turn some of these into jewellery!

I did some shopping in a craft store ( a whole new experience, since I usually only craft with second hand materials) and found these:

"these" are some jewellery-making supplies, and I believe that the copper ones are used for leather cords.

From now on it was easy! I began matching the stones and the copper thingies, to find a few matching sets.

Then, took my smokin' hot glue gun, and filled the copper thingy with glue, and quickly pressed the stones into place.

like that!

Nothing too difficult here!

The teardrop-shaped stones were the easiest. Since the copper thingies were a bit flexible, the stones fitted in quite well!

Now my pendants were ready, the last step was finding some necklaces for them.
So I happily hopped on my bike after work, and cycled to the nearest thrift shop, (gotta  keep the upcycling thing going!)

And of course, they didn't have any plain necklaces.. "Sorry, someone bought almost all our jewelry earlier this week!" an agitated cashier told me. When I tried my luck at the next thrift shop, I got a similar story. Apparently, some sort of teacher had bought all of it for some sort of school project, And had left only the really ugly and plastic items behind. Slightly -but not entirely- disheartened, I rummaged through the leftovers, where I found this:

Yikes! Ooglay!

Really? Pink feathers??
Usually, I wouldn't even have taken this home if they had paid me for it, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So, I sighed, paid a full 1,50 for it ( come of it! I've bought chairs for that amount of money!) and went home.

At home I grabbed my pliers, stripped the necklace of all its bling and send the feathers to the Great Garbage Can Beyond.
With a small reused ring, I attached the pendant to the stripped necklace, and was done! Two sets went to my mother in law for Sinterklaas, and kept a small one for myself. Here it is!

see my slightly agitated hands? Joost took the pictures this morning, just before I needed to go to the hospital to give a presentation for a visiting committee from the ministry. So I was quite nervous!! But all went well, whew!

I've been collecting stones since I was little, so I like the idea of turning more stones from countries that I've visited into jewellery. what about you?

bejazzled!

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