Treasure Hunting at arc

By Julie White

If you’ve never taken the time to hunt through the jewelry at ARC thrift, you’re missing out. There is always a huge selection of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, everything you could possible wear. Last weekend I found this beauty:

Isn’t it pretty? It was $4.99, but on Saturday I scored it for $2.50! I love Saturdays at ARC. It has a lot going on for one necklace, but I bought it because I really like all of the different beads and pendants.

My mission? To turn these great parts from one necklace into different pieces that are a bit toned down and that I’d actually wear. Challenge accepted!

I figured the easiest place to start was with the main glass pendant.

This was such an easy fix, using pliers to separate it from the chain. I ended up with several pendants to put onto other chains.

From there I worked on the rhinestones and pearls:

Using a wire cutter I removed the attached loop from the back of the rhinestones so that they were flat.

I had some barrettes and earring posts leftover from a different project that I superglued to the rhinestones creating two sets of earrings (small and large rhinestones) and two barrettes.

There were lots of pretty pearls on the necklace, as well, that I removed with pliers.

I attached a large pearl to a small pearl with their wire loops and then glued an earring post to the side of the large pearls.

From one necklace I ended up with 3 pairs of earrings, 2 barrettes and multiple pendants to use on chains as individual necklaces.

Mission accomplished! My jewelry collection is a lot bigger now.