Upcycled Vintage Jewelry Skull Picture

10 June

Well, today is usually one of my favorite days of the month. It's Thrifty Chicks challenge day! However, this month it's just me 😔 The other ladies had conflicts so they have chosen to either skip this month's challenge or post their project at a later date.

I know that you look forward to this day too and I didn't want to let you down so I have my project finished and ready to share!

This month's challenge item was old jewelry and guess what? I have lots of old jewelry! Maybe you aren't surprised since you've seen my craft studio 😉 I have almost gotten rid of this jewelry on more than one occasion but I'm SO glad I didn't... my hoarder tendencies saved me this time!!

Upcycled Vintage Jewelry Skull Picture

That's the sneak peek I shared over on my Instagram!

For this project, I got out all my old jewelry to see what I had available for this project.

Then I picked out a frame for my project.

I like the picture that was in this frame so I removed it and cut a piece of cardboard to fit the opening. Then I covered the cardboard with black felt using hot glue to secure it to the back.

Now I have a nice background for my picture.

If you haven't already figured out what I'm making, it's a jewelry skull!! I printed out a skull that I found online to kind of guide me.

Then I decided which jewelry pieces I wanted to start with and began laying out my design. I used some of this broken necklace...

... this vintage rhinestone sweater clip...

... and a piece from an old rhinestone necklace...

... to create a mouth. The white stones and some of the metal links from the first necklace became teeth and the sweater clip and necklace piece became a chin (or goatie!) I added a bumblebee pin above the mouth, it creates a bit of a mustache! A double heart pin turned upside down created a nose.

Next, I used two vintage clip-on earrings...

... two old buttons...

... and two spider earrings...

... and added cheeks, and details on the sides of the mouth.

These large vintage sequins...

... and two more vintage earrings created the eyes.

As I was going, I used pliers to snap off the earring and pin backs so the pieces would lie flat when glued down. I used E6000 glue to attach the pieces.