Purple Haze Rock Necklace

Back in July, I went to Las Vegas with a few coworkers to cover a dog toy convention for The BarkPost. (Yes, they exist. It's crazy to me too.) So one night one of my coworkers (Danielle) and I somehow got separated from the rest of the group and ended up roaming around the Vegas strip for a bit searching for that elusive canned champagne from Sophia Coppola that only exists in the western half of the US. Maybe only California? You Californians have it ALL! While we never found the canned champagne, I did find some pretty awesome purple rocks in a 7-Eleven that also sold postcards with boobs and plush parrot keychains that squawked curse words. And that is how this necklace was born.

Ham graffiti in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

While most of my rock necklaces are made from rocks that I found on the ground or beach, it's only fitting that this necklace has more eclectic beginnings.

So there are the three rocks from the Las Vegas 7-Eleven, some plastic purple polished amethyst beads from Michaels, and some rough rainbow fluorite from an Eastern hippie shop in the Lower East Side near my work in Chinatown.

When I bought the fluorite from the hippie shop, this lovely girl who works in the shop told me that fluorite was really good for your memory. I didn't bother to ask her whether everything got canceled out if you were to place Las Vegas 7-Eleven rocks next to the memory-boosting fluorite rocks.

Progress of the necklace. I used leather scraps that I bought from Ebay as the base. If you search "Lot of leather scraps" in Ebay, you can find some like what I got.

Stitching the fluorite in place before filling everything in with smaller beads.

And since the rocks I bought in Las Vegas weren't actually beads, I used a bit of E-6000 superglue to hold the rocks in place and then stitched gold thread on top just for the aesthetic.

The back of the necklace before I glued a leather backing to it.

After I finished the necklace, I was trying to figure out just what it looked like. The color, the texture-- kind of resembles the Purple Haze strain of marijuana, lettuce, and carrots.

I wore this necklace for the first time a couple weekends ago when Adele and I were walking around Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We were so tickled when the graffiti matched. :)

To see more of my statement necklaces with rocks and everything else, click here! More necklaces coming... Haven't kicked this obsession yet. :)


Purple haze photo sources: 1, 2, 3, 4