Fordite cabs cut by Gary WilsonPainted Heart Necklace and Earrings
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At shows, people invariably point to some of my pieces and ask how I painted the image on the stones. I always tell them that "God painted it" and explain that I search far and wide for stones with beautiful pictures in them.
Still, the idea of painting a necklace is interesting... but how could I make painted jewelry anyway? With Fordite! These particular "stones" have thin swirls of black, silver, white, also bit of blue and red. The stylized heart centerpiece has a natural almost drusy-like channel reminiscent of the vugs in real stones like the Rio Negro Necklace. It is highly dimensional, the shape flows with the rivers of color and it required one prong to secure the high side. The cabs display fine undulating lines like some agates but they are actually made entirely of paint, specifically baked auto enamel salvaged from old auto factories. In earlier times when cars were spray painted by hand, the overspray accumulated over the years into this most interesting jewelry material. The jet beads complement the stone with their soft black color, the seed bead spiral blends in the other centerpiece colors, and a bit of coral adds pop. The jewelry is small (by my standards) and would work with anything from Levis through business attire to evening wear.
Looking for interesting books to list below, I drew a blank searching for "Fordite." "Jet" yields a whole lot of unrelated material, "jet jewelry" isn't very interesting... so what about "Mongolian jet?" Amazon suggested three books, none of which have anything to do with the material in this necklace. However, one of them is a book I hadn't seen before by a favorite author of mine, Tim Cahill. It is listed below in case you also have a wacky sense of humor and enjoy reading about crazy adventures.
Whatever your taste in literature, I hope you will order this Fordite set today.
