Saturday yard saling: transformations

We stopped at just one yard sale this morning--holiday weekends are usually short on sales. This one had a lot of costume jewelry, including two bead necklaces with big floss tassels on them. I bought them for two dollars apiece. Lydia was horrified. "You aren't really going to wear those..."  I wasn't making any promises.

When I got them home and inspected them, the tassels seemed a bit, I don't know, shopworn; they were fluffed out too many ways. And neither of them really seemed to go with their respective necklaces. Having had three daughters who have all had their turn at making bead jewelry,  I'm not at all squeamish about necklace dissections. It turned out that both necklaces were just beads strung on elastic cord, with the tassel findings strung on near the knot in the cord. (I think maybe somebody made them with beads from a craft store.) I knew that when I snipped the cord, I'd lose a few beads from each one, but that was okay; they were a little heavy anyway. I just retied the cords tightly without the tassels.

This is the silver-coloured necklace, without its tassel. (The other one is a mix of glass beads.)

I have a couple of vintage 1980's silver-coloured scarf rings. Here's one of them, clipped to a space between the beads. (This is the one I like best.)

Here's another one, also clipped between the beads. (The advantages of stretchy elastic cord.) Not quite as nice as the rose, but workable.

Finally I fastened a brooch in the same spot.

I don't know if I'd bother clipping anything onto the glass beads; they're enough on their own.

So: one yard sale, minus two ugly necklaces, plus five better ones, for four dollars. By my math that's okay.