"Turquoise" necklaces - Guess what they are made from!!

I got the idea for today's post from a commenter who likes turquoise - made me think of the gorgeous turquoise jewelry, which is usually pretty expensive if it is the real thing.  A lot of the faux turquoise looks faux, but take a look at this turquoise necklace, which is handmade:

I know my picture is a little blurry....sorry.  Here is a closeup of the necklace this lady made:

Doesn't it look like the real thing?  I also made a couple of these necklaces - mine were mauve, and one lady also did a black one.  The people I gave my 2 necklaces to for Christmas thought they were made of stones....Here is what the necklaces started off as:

Can you guess what they are yet?  Here is the next step after these nuggets were  "prepared" to use:

They were painted with craft paint and spray sealed....then liquid twinkle glitter was painted over them (silver or gold or iridescent)- a little of this glitter paint goes a long way - here is a picture of that step (do you know what the necklaces are made of yet??)   When I was spray sealing mine, I dropped the whole board; fortunately only a couple broke, but I had made sooo many of them, that I had lots of extras - I kinda get carried away sometimes

Now once the paint is dried (dries fairly quickly as we were able to complete them this night - except for me, I'm slow), you take your silver or gold or whatever color and/shape beads you want to use with these nugget beads, and plan out your necklace, like this:

Now you can string them up, adjust to the length you want, and tie the necklace off:

Have you figured out what you use to make these jewelry nugget beads with yet?  Here is one more shot of them, ready to be pulled off their toothpicks:

Dragging out the suspense a little longer....lol....here are the 2 mauve necklaces I made that I scanned in my computer!  I used crystal beads and iridescent twinkle glitter....notice the irregular shapes of the nugget beads and that I put lockets on mine:

And even though these beads are totally dried and sealed with paint, they will not revert back to their original form, which were cut potato pieces!!!  Can you believe it??!  And no, they don't smell either! But I wouldn't want to stand out in the rain with my necklace on, just in case, ha ha.  Hard to believe that you take these ugly brown things and turn them into something beautiful - kinda like the ugly duckling huh?

Here are the directions for them if you want to try them - I would love it if you left a comment and tell me what you thought of this post and these necklaces....Thanks for spending time with me today: