An Eerie Coincidence

Now that Christmas has come and gone, I can post the two jewelry pieces that I made for my sister.

The first piece is a pendant of our mom when she was a teenager. This picture was one of our dad's favorites of our mom, and he had it framed and on his dresser for as long as I can remember. To make the piece, I designed and cut a pattern to frame the picture from copper and nickel sheet, etched the metals, and sandwiched the photo and plexiglass between the two pieces of metal. I added some brass stampings for embellishment and added a bail made of iron wire.

The second piece is a necklace I made using an old family photograph of our great-grandparents and their eleven children. I constructed a box from 22 gauge copper sheet, and placed a small copy of the photograph in the bottom. I had made multiple copies of the photograph, and cut out small groupings of the people, building the picture up and adding dimension to it. I then filled the box with resin. It is hanging from a leather cord, to which I added some vintage keys and hardware for added interest.

This is the eerie part........

It all began with the old family photograph. I have had this large picture hanging in my livingroom in every house I've lived in for the past 25 years. My sister has had this same old photograph at her house for just as long....

I don't know why I decided to use this image in the necklace I made her this year, or for that matter, why I chose to build up the image and make it dimensional, but I did.

When she opened the present up and looked at the necklace, she had an odd look on her face. I couldn't figure out why....didn't she like it???

But then she had me open a certain present up that she had made for me....

And this is what was in the box.........

She used the exact same photograph, and also had built up the photograph by cutting duplicate images of the people and adding dimension to the picture. She had the photograph framed in a deep, black frame. Seriously...what are the odds of us both using the same picture and doing the same thing to it on the same holiday as gifts to each other??????

So here are our two gifts, side by side. I guess it's true that sisters do really think alike!