Saturday, 6 June 2015

Revamping Old/Cheap Jewellery

My first DIY, how exciting! And also quite ironic that this is my first time doing it too, ha! To be honest, this isn't a new idea, so I'm not pretending to be the brains behind this, it is quite a common thing to do. However, I've only ever seen people do parts of jewellery. Here's what I mean..

                            Start                                                  Finish
Repainting the elements of your jewellery is something that I have seen done many times before, so no big ideas there! This piece was definitely in need of a revamp! It's something that I've had for ages, I bought it from eBay because I liked the colours but when it arrived the gold was so brassy and cheap looking that I think I've worn it once and I was conscious about it all the time! I'm not sure why I've never just thrown it away, it was super cheap, about £2.50 I think, I've just always felt that I could use it somehow. Now looking at it, I'm super happy that I kept it!

What I want to highlight with this is that you don't only have to repaint the coloured bits of your jewellery, but you can actually change the chain too. It's difficult to see in that picture, so here's another few, where it's still difficult to see. Sorry! My phone is rubbish at picture taking and the difference is so subtle it's difficult to see anyway!


What I wanted to do was tone down the gold so it didn't look cheap. You can see on the left side of the pictures the side that I have painted and the right is still the original. I used No7 Hot to Trot which looks really gold on their website, but it's actually much more subtle.


As soon as I started painting it I knew I'd made the right choice. It just settled the gold down a bit, without being too obvious that I had just painted all over it. I must admit, it did take me a while.. About 3 1/2 hours.. Which sounds like a long time and I suppose it is, but I'm super happy with the end product! And to be fair the necklace is a super difficult choice because of all the components and small twists and turns! Combine that with my need for perfection and I set myself a little bit of a difficult task. I was only planning to paint the chain too, but then I got carried away and started painting over the blue bits too! Oh well, like I say I was super happy with it! And it was ridiculously easy. All you need is a necklace and a few of your favourite nail varnishes. I went over the coloured parts with clear nail varnish to give them shine and make them smooth, but I wouldn't recommend it for the whole thing, I think it would make it look a bit tacky again.


I was wearing a white top today and I think it just showed it off even more. It's definitely better that the original! What do you think? I'd love some opinions!

No comments:

Post a Comment