Fancy - The Gala Necklace

Recently, Pathways, my favorite organization, threw a big party—a gala! I love any excuse to get dressed up, wear heels (now that I can actually walk in them), and have a good time, and the cause was also great: raising money for families of soldiers and special needs children, and for Teen/Family Camp.

While I did some small things to help with the gala (helping set up for the silent auction and processing silent auction winning transactions at the end of the night), the biggest thing I did to help was make a necklace just for the silent auction.

This is a special necklace. Not only is it the only thing I've made in months... I purposely made it using high-end materials, in hopes it would bring a hefty winning auction price (and therefore lots of money donated to Pathways). That... didn't quite work out, but one happy bidder did get to go home with this lovely necklace. 

Did I mention it's valued at over $650?

I made matching earrings, too, but I only remembered to get a crappy cell phone picture of them on that night.

This necklace has all kinds of yummy details. It’s got high-end stones, first of all: ruby, sapphire, and emerald… and the rest of the stones are very high quality: seraphinite, tourmaline, peridot, citrine, smoky quartz, kyanite, turquoise, larimar, amazonite, amethyst, lapis, hematite, pearls, jade, chalcedony, rhodochrosite, moonstone, sunstone, carnelian, malachite, and garnet.

I also used some large Swarovski crystals to draw extra attention.

I used 14k gold wire, and all of the findings were 100% handmade. This necklace can be worn long, or it can be doubled. It looks pretty darn fabulous either way.

I just love the cluster of sapphire, peridot, ruby, and moonstone hanging in the middle of the gold wire circle.

I seriously had a hard time giving this one up… may need to make one of these for myself, too.

Be sure to click the pictures to see the full-sized images. It's worth seeing, if I do say so myself!