Make This: Love Heals Mountain Necklace

Love Heals is an amazing jewelry company based in California. For each design sold, 10 trees are planted in Ethiopia. How cool is that? Ever since I saw Vanessa Hudgens wearing this necklace at the Planet Blue Mother Nature party I've been in love. I've been stalking the necklace on eBay but they go for a small fortune, somewhere in the $300 dollar range so I figured I try to make one for myself.


Above are a few close up pictures of the necklace. It looks amazing on but kind of weird off.  Below is a DIY if you want to make one yourself as well.

Part One: 

Step One: Gather: Five or more charms, needle nose pliers, wire cutters, scissors, deerskin, jump rings and jewelry pins

Step Two: Cut out a large circle of leather.

Step Three: Cut six long strands of cord by cutting the leather circle in spiral direction

Step Four: Separate the six leather strands into two sets of three.

Step Five: Knot both sets of three leather cords at the top leaving a little bit of fringe and then braid.

Step Six: When you are finished braiding, knot each of the braids off leaving again a small amount of fringe at the bottom.

Step Seven: Lay the two braids side by side.

Step Eight: Tie the two cords together at the top and then twice near the bottom.

Part Two:

Step One: Cut four small pieces of cord

Step Two: Loosen the bottom knots you made in part one

Step Three: Thread the cord through the knots and then tie them off

Step Four: Tighten knots once you have the cord in place, You can play around with it. I tried it on and adjusted the knots until it felt just right. I had to loosen a few of them and cut some of the fridge. It looks best when the fringe is at different lengths. That is what is so great about this necklace, nothing needs to be perfect.

Part Three:

Step One: Take your charm and place a pin through through the bead hole/hook.

Step Two: Take your pliers and form the pin into a hoop.

Step Three: Then attach your charm now equipped with a hoop onto your jump rings and attach that to a leather knot

Final Results:

I'm so happy with the one I made it looks exactly like the real thing and I got to customize it with my own beads and charms. I've been wearing it everyday since I made it :)

Good Stuff: Deerskin Everything

I've been seriously digging all things leather this month but a lot of my favorite piece are too pricey for my budget. So I decided to try to make some myself. I love throwing myself into projects and have been going crazy recently trying to recreate some of my favorites and make some original pieces of my own. I dropped a ton of money this month buying deer hides and tools and have been working non stop making leather jewelry in my free time. I want to start making bags and shoes soon but first things first. Making leather jewelry is great to get familiar with the basics. I plan on working my way up. I'm going try to share some of my projects in case anyone else wants to start dabbling with leather too. Here are a few of the pieces that got me into this mess :)

Torchlight Jewelery

Deerskin Moccasin Boots via Made

more Torchlight Jewelery

T Smith Knowles, always out of this world. 

Moontive Bags

An awesome pair of 80s moccasin boots I scored off of eBay.

Heyoka Leather greatness

Heyoka+Torchlight Clutch

More T Smith

Insides: Sylvia Marius

Sylvia Marius is truly inspired. Free people did a wonderful write up about her the other day which you can find, here. She has worked with them to design some amazing store displays.

Here are a few pictures of her home that are equally inspiring: 

Photographed by Mai-Linh for Marie Claire-Maison 2008

Insides: Interieurs d’Haiti

I posted last time I was going refrain from jewelry posts its been hard but I finally found something worthy (and non-jewlery related) to post. Here are some pictures from “Interieurs d’Haiti"a beautiful book by Marie-Louise Fouchard and Roberto Stephenson. Check out these beauties: