Crafting an Art Deco Necklace

As part of the JiguFacturer Design Team we get a sneak peek of the monthly challenges for Brenda Schweder’s Now That’s A Jig! Facebook Group. The August Challenge is Eras in Time, and our team spent July making amazing creations.

I’ve been researching the 1930s for other reasons, and after a few book consultations from the library I settled on an art deco theme. Internet images provided additional inspiration, and I set about making my version of the chained collar (Which I now cannot find to give the original artist credit).

I tried to create a similar scallopped necklace component, but mine turned out a bit differently.

Soon I had created the necklace components, and looked into my very small stash of chain to see what to pair it with.

Then I had to figure out what paper best reflected the Art Deco Era. I think the marble paper might find its way to a 70s theme. The squares were quite striking but didn’t go with the rounded components. This is Lokta Paper from Dick Blick’s.

I slept on the options, and went with the silver-grey flower. It is always exciting to see how the design changes as you cut out small bits of the graphics. 

Then I fired up the griddle and coated the paper with encaustic medium. This darkened the background significantly, but kept the shimmer intact.

Soon everything was cut to size.

Then came the challenge of attaching the chain to the piece. This is when I realized that scale is hard to tell from an Internet image, and my components were far bigger than the inspiration piece.

I had to adjust the length a few times to figure out how this necklace would lay with the chain still being ‘scallopped’.

I cut up links, fastened them, shortened the chain some more, until the necklace was sort of where I want it.

There is a bit of a flapping effect where the ‘triplets’ interact with my collar bone, but I’ve worn it out and about and it hasn’t fallen apart!

I’m pleased with the end result, and will take the learnings on to another necklace soon.

Check out the Now That’s a Jig! page for the #erasintimentaj #Nowthatsachallenge! submissions of other JigUFacturers later this month! Below are some other contenders I looked at. That corset by Lesley Vik Waddell is amazing!

Where do you get your inspiration?