{Valentine Pendants}

I have been wanting to create some jewelry to share on my blog for a while now.  You saw my Valentine PaperClip & String Earrings, and I was pleased with those.  So I decided to try to make some Valentine Pendants.  I have had this pendant in my mind since seeing this post by Angelina of Ruby Jean.   I used her pendant tutorial as a "jumping  off point" to make my own.  I started with these supplies.

I cut a piece of string that I estimated would be long enough to wrap an entire plastic ring with.  I wrapped the string around the ring one time and tied a knot.

I then started wrapping the ring with the string.

I put a blob of Liquid Stitch on a piece of paper.  I dipped the ring in the blob and smeared the glue on the ring with my finger.  Then I wrapped the string around the ring.  When I got to a portion of the ring without any glue, I dipped the ring in the glue again and continued wrapping  until the entire ring was covered with string.

I knew I wanted to make different types of pendants, so I wrapped several rings with string.  Then I had to decide what to put in my rings.  You've probably seen from my previous posts that I love to use old book pages in my crafts.  So I decided to use book pages as the background of my pendants.

I traced a stringless ring on card stock and cut the circles out.  I did the same thing with book pages.  (The book pages I have are really thin, so I knew I needed the card stock as a base for the book pages.)  I used Mod Podge to glue the card stock and book page circles together.  After they dried, I attached the rings to the circles with a layer of Mod Podge.  Then I had to decide how to embellish my pendants.

I took out all my Valentine stickers and embellishments.  I decided to use heart stickers, glitter, microbeads,  and confetti to decorate my pendants.  I put the embellishments in the pendants and filled the middle of each circle with Mod Podge Dimensional Magic.

When using the Dimensional Magic, you MUST make sure there are no bubbles.  If you see a bubble, pop it with a pin immediately.  I can tell you from experience that dried bubbles are NOT cute.  When the Dimensional Magic dried overnight, there was a "well" in the middle of each pendant.  (I guess the Dimensional Magic shrinks while drying.)  And, sadly, the cutest pendant had a large bubble thingy in the middle of it.

I simply filled each pendant with the Dimensional Magic again.

After the second layer dried, I covered the back of the pendants with a layer of Mod Podge because the back was only card stock.  I then had to decide how I was going to hang my pendants from a necklace.  I had previously bought some pinch bails.  So I opened one up to attach it to a pendant.

I slid the pinch bail over the pendant and squeezed it shut with pliers.  (Don't scuff your metal with the pliers, though!)  Then I had finished pendants.  

I like the way they look, but I'm always my worst critic....  So I hate that you can still kind of see the bubble in the pendant with the red heart.  And I hate that the pink heart doesn't show up as well as I would have liked it to.  And I hate that the second layer of the Dimensional Magic didn't dry as clear as the first layer did.  But I'm trying to work on accepting that everything I do isn't going to be perfect.  And who knows?  You might not have even noticed all that stuff if I hadn't mentioned it.  So if you didn't notice it, forget everything you just read.  Okay? ;)  There are some things I love about them, though.  I love that the pink one says "Creatress" at the bottom.  I guess that's what I am, right?  And I love the vintage look of the pendants.  I have two other pendants that I made.  One of them ended up being a string covered ring with a blob of glitter in the middle.  I have hope that I can salvage it by putting something on the glittery blob.

The other is cute, but I ran out of pinch bails.  So it is waiting to be transformed from fancy poker chip to beautiful pendant.

Here's one more look at the finished pendants.

I think they'll be cute to wear on Valentine's Day or maybe any other day....  If you decide to make a pendant like this, I would love to see your finished product.  I would love to see your version of any of my crafts, for that matter.  Send me an email so I can check it out! :)