Freedom Fridays: Southwestern Zen

I have been on a serious boho kick lately, and when I saw this stone blue deer skin leather cord from Nina Designs I was thrilled! I could not wait to pair it up with a pretty natural stone and a touch of silver. Nothing says boho quite like a little Southwestern twist.

I started with an African opal stone, which matched perfectly with the leather cord. I added a silver wire wrap down over the top of the stone and then threaded a carved bone disc above to complete a unique pendant.

Next I threaded a tube bail with the leather cord and attached the pendant. I used a silver wire wrap at the ends of leather for a nice finishing touch. I can not tell you how much I love this leather. It is incredibly soft and easy to work with, but strong as well. I've worked with suede quite a bit, and while I love the look of suede it has a tendency to break. I can't count how many times the suede has snapped on me in the middle of a project --- insert swear word. But this leather can withstand my pulling and twisting.

As a finishing touch, I added a hand hammered toggle and pulled it to the front because I didn't want to hide it in the back. The result is a simple leather cord necklace with a style all its own. A friend saw my final design and called it Southwestern Zen. I think that is what I'll have to call this design.

The materials above were provided as part of the Nina Designs blogging program. The author of this blog has not received any payment from above-mentioned company. The post above represents only personal opinion of the blog author.