Spiral Fossil Disc Meets Micro Macrame: Art Jewelry Elements Component Reveal

If you follow the Art Jewelry Elements blog (and if you don't, you really should!), you know they do a monthly component challenge and giveaway.  I was one of the lucky recipients this month and I received one of Karen Totten's Spiral Fossil Discs!

I have a bit of an obsession with Karen's work.  Do you  remember the necklace I made with one of her bird and branch sets in this post?  Her ceramic pieces are amazingly detailed and beautiful and she continually comes up with new and different things to keep it interesting.  Here are some Starry Road Studio beads I have in my treasure trove:

See what I mean?  Anywho...(sorry, I got distracted by the beads for just a minute there) Lindsay Starr was also lucky enough to get one of the discs this month (and yes, her stuff is another obsession of mine as demonstrated here and here).  She had her piece finished soon after she got the disc and shared it with me.  I like to keep pushing my limits with macrame to keep it interesting, so I thought I would see if I could mimic what Lindsay did with beads, but with knots.  This is her piece (photo used with her permission):

In an effort to mimic but not copy her design exactly, I started with an antler tip that my dad gave me and knotted around it.

I've seen this technique before in some South American macrame designs, but I hadn't ever tried doing it myself.  They typically use a waxed cord which gives it a little tackiness and I wasn't sure how the process would work with the unwaxed nylon cord I use.  I made sure I knotted my first row very tightly around the antler (which is actually the bottom row in this photo).  The antler angles out a little bit at the top, so that first row of knotting actually holds the antler in place.  

Linsday chose a y-shaped yoke for the top strap of the necklace in order to cover as little of Karen's disc as possible.  I chose to do two separate straps of macrame, but I kept them narrow around the disc for the same reason.

In keeping with the sort of rustic, organic feel of the piece, I chose some carved bone beads to use directly above the disc in a light color to pull in the color from the antler tip.  From there I added some basic square knots in the teal colored thread.

The beads I used in the strap are recycled glass from Ghana. They are made by crushing discarded glass and adding a colorant.  The powder is poured into molds and the stem of a plant is added, which burns away during the firing leaving a hole for stringing.  The beads are fired in a wood burning earthen oven.  The look is crude and primitive and perfect for this project.

I used simple half knot sinnets for the bulk of the necklace straps.  The spirals catch the light in interesting ways and draw the eye to their twists and shadows.

At the end I added a few more glass beads and a simple brass hook closure.  I think it's a fun piece and I've really enjoyed the study in "compare and contrast" with Lindsay's necklace.  I hope you'll visit her page, then stop back to tell me what you think.  What similarities did you spot?  What differences?  Which elements worked better with beads and which did you like better with knots?

I hope you will also join me in visiting the blogs of the other participants to see what each of them has done with the Spiral Fossil Disc: