At the moment, the festive season is in full swing in India. This means lots of small festivals and religious celebrations and therefore lots of festive attire. While silver (or silver tone) Vintage jewellery can be a unique complement to Indian wear, gold comes out as a winner in the end. There are several reasons for this. The chief of them is that gold goes well with warmer tones and most Indians have a warm undertone compared to a cool undertone. Gold also looks fantastic with brown skin. Secondly, a large percentage of festive Indian attire is in deep jewel tone and warm colours with interlacing of gold colour thread. This makes gold tone jewellery the perfect complement. For this festive season, I created three pieces of Cord jewellery with stone pendants. Here they are.
Cord jewellery with stone pendants
The exercise began when a client ordered the black piece above. She found a photograph of the Chettinad Aaram that I made in 2017 and wanted a similar piece. She was visiting Chettinad for a function and wanted jewellery that would complement her pastel coloured checked saree. After much discussion we settled on a solid black crepe fabric and a red and blue altered kemp pendant. Since she wanted a really simple piece, I kept the wire scrolls to the minimum as compared to the original necklace.
Double cord necklace
The same client came back to me with another request. She wanted to know if I could create a layered necklace with kemp pendants which is very much in trend at this point. However, she wanted me to use cord instead of chain. This presented me with an opportunity and a lot of problems. While chains make a piece look dainty, cords make it look bulky. I need matching pendants that looked “south Indian” but were not in the kemp style. I needed a smooth cord/fabric that would sit well high up the neck. After a lot of discussion, I suggested imported silk cord and components from Jaipur that use the technique of kundan as well. It is sad that such components from Jaipur are mislabeled sold as Vadasery kemp items. This is misleading and just wrong. However, both sets of components are beautiful in their own right and can be sold and worn without referring to one as the other.
Both the pieces were custom made, sold and cannot be recreated.
Denim cord necklace
I believe that original fashion comes from fusion elements from different contexts. Hence, I love mixing colours and materials. The more unexpected the combination, the more eclectic effect they produce. Take for example this denim cord necklace. I found this range of tiger claw based pendant with a supplier and loved this one as it combined the form of a peacock with that of a tiger claw. The stones, pearls and the claw are synthetic. To contrast this strikingly Indian composite form in gold colour, I used a raw denim cord. This is a long necklace to complement an Indo-Western attire. This necklace is for sale.
I hope you enjoyed looking at the three pieces of cord jewellery with stone pendants that I made recently. Find below some cord jewellery tutorials for you to try.
Past Cord jewellery tutorials
I have written several cord jewellery tutorials in the past. Infact, I have used two of the three exact cords used here in tutorials earlier. Both the denim cord and the the silk one are from Endless Leather. I have used a black version of this same silk cord in the DIY Faux Multani Necklace tutorial. You can see the denim cord in use in the denim cord necklace tutorial.
I hope you find it interesting
Cheers
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