Mysterious Clump of Pearls

A couple of months back a client said she'd be sending over a string of pearls in silver thread for redesigning. She tried to explain that they were tangled but that was an understatement. What I received was a clump of pearls in silver string. I couldn't even tell if there was a clasp or not, where it began and ended, and what kind of necklace it was.. *sigh* my client friend never ceases to amaze me!

So I tried playing Dr.Quackquack and tried to untangle them but it seemed when one knot was free another one formed. And as if that's not hard enough, I found out the pearls were glued to the string! It was taking too much time and I was losing patience I had to set it aside to work on my other projects. Although from time to time I'd work on it, it still looked the same as when I first got it. I was feeling hopeless.

Finally done with everything else and now having some free time, I decided to take this on and not accept orders until it's done. Two headaches after and nowhere near finished I decided the best course to take was to just cut the string and pull out the pearl. Which I did and found out how strong the glue was that even after yanking out the thread, which was no easy feat, for most of the pearls the silver foil covering the thread and some thread didn't come off completely, so it blocked the hole. I had to poke it out with a sharp needle and then pull out the thread fiber by fiber until I could see through the hole.

I broke off 3 needles doing this and although I could see through it there were still some silver foil in there so the next challenge was finding something that's thin to slide through the hole but hard enough to push through the foil remnants. Nylon thread was too soft. A thread would need a needle but the needle was too thick. Which means a pearl strand look was out of the question. The silver colored copper wire I normally use was also too thick. So I went with .04 copper wire. I tried some chainmaille with the copper chains, came out with something nice but have no idea what it's called.

And so finally after three months it's done! And I'm so proud of how beautiful they turned out to be.

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