How to Make Altered Beaded Broach Jewelry

In Friday's blog post, Carol's Pin Swap was mentioned. Over the weekend, I made two altered art broaches for this exchange. One piece was made from a silver heart broach, and one from a polymer based "sun face" pin.

The two broaches are altered art projects. Heavy cardboard was cut from scrap material to make the backing, and also for stability of the pin. On the back of each broach, coordinating fabric was cut in the shape of the back base, glued to the cardboard and trimmed when dry.

Black, white, blue and green were the predominant colors in the sun faced broach, surrounded by coordinating colored glass and polymer beads threaded onto head pins; those threaded beads and more tiny green seed glass beads were glued to the plastic backing around the sun face.

The silver pin was a heart shaped broach which I altered by using a photograph of my mom, then embellishing it with gold leaf and the burnished photo cut to fit the inside of the heart. Beads were threaded onto headpins, turned for closing with needle nosed pliers, and then attached to the silver base heart with jump rings. Further embellishment with gold colored glass beads were then glued onto the photo face.

Again, the The Sassy Art Goddess' rules for this swap are:

Create a brooch/pin no larger that 2 ½ x 2 ½ inches. Anything goes for the faceas long as it implies a human face and has some beads. Polymer clay, buttons, paper, clay, felting, image transfer, bead or regular embroidery, what ever strikes your fancy. This is a 1 -1 swap. Due to me by September 26th. You must include return postage of $5.00 or a Priority Stamp and return mailing label. If you do not send return postage, your pin is mine. International swappers welcome and encouraged. Please include a note with your real name and screen name, mailing address, title of your piece and any other info you think might be nice to know about your piece. All pins/broaches will be swapped and mailed the first 2 weeks of October. This is a fun, fast swap and great opportunity for all you newbies to try your hand at creating something.

Can't wait to see what comes back to me in the mail in October!