February 4, 2012:

As I may have mentioned, my dad does some amazing upholstery and woodworking for various things such as classic cars, private jets, antique furniture, custom furniture, etc. - you name it. He is truly one of the most talented people that I have ever met. This past summer, two of the cars that he did the interiors for were first in their class at Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance - the most prestigious classic car competition in the world! The one car, the 1934 Voisin, won Best In Show! Jay Leno was certainly impressed - Check out this video.

Anyway, the reason I am telling you all of this is that my dad's shop has been a wonderful place to gather materials for my projects over the years :). Among my favorite things to get from his shop are leather sample books! Leather companies send little sample books with various colors of leather. The pieces are small and have so much potential! In this project I cut two strips from different samples out of the book. I braided the two strips together with a piece of chain and connected the ends to some metal rings that I got at Beads World in NYC. At first I thought I was going to make this into a bracelet but suddenly I was struck with the idea of making this asymmetrical necklace, which I am really happy with! I had to make sure that I had heavier chain on the bottom so that the braided part would hang to the side. I attached a lighter weight chain to the top, which will prevent that from moving toward the bottom and shifting the location of the braided part. I used jump rings to connect the chain parts. I used fabric glue to fold the leather parts over and connect them to the metal rings. I think I will get quite a bit of wear out of this one :).