I found this particular stone buried in a box at the back of one of my stone suppliers stores. It obviously should have been behind the glass counter but had been misplaced by mistake. I promptly decided it was the one stone I had to have from that trip even if I got nothing else (I did get some other items because I have a beautiful and understanding wife that lets me do such things). 🙂 It was priced properly and being a stone geek/stone nerd I was excited to get it and make something with it.

I had seen some other dinosaur bone jewelry pieces by other artists (mainly in jewelry magazines, both as cut stones and finished pieces), and had found that they were quite pricy and I thought out of my reach financially. Among other things dinosaur bones are fairly uncommon, especially cut and polished for use in jewelry. I decided to make it into a pendant due to the size of the stone. I felt it was too big to make into a ring, and rings severely limit the number of people I could sell it to, as most people will not buy a ring that is not already in their size. A pendant would let me a very unique and bold statement piece.

I chose to set it in sterling silver and add texture around the border of the piece to draw your eye to the stone at the center, which I felt was rightly the star of the piece, as well as contrast the natural structure and shape of the stone. I chose to make the texture with just the corner edge of my riveting hammer as this would produce a straight line with slightly rounded edges, so it would not feel rough or catch on clothing as it would have if I had used a file or saw to make the lines. I made a large bail on the back of the piece so it could fit on anything from a small chain to a large, wide neck ring depending on what was desired. I also chose to patina the silver to really bring out the texture of the piece, as well as to make caring for it much easier (I will go into this in more detail in a future blog post but for now suffice it to say if a piece is designed to look good with a patina, you won’t have to clean it each time before wearing it like you would have to do with a highly polished piece of silver).

This piece took quite a while to finish but I feel the final product justifies the time spent making it. The photo doesn’t really do it justice, you can kind of see the reds and oranges present but they really pop out and come alive under direct sunlight. I’m proud of how the piece came out over all and love the fact that it’s so unique (how often do you see dinosaur bone let alone as jewelry outside of a museum?). It’s a piece over 65 million years in the making after all. 🙂