My mother passed in July and I was left with more jewelry than I could ever possibly wear. There were a lot of costume brooches and several broken pieces of jewelry. So I decided to make a heart on canvas with them. It’s a special way to use some of the pieces of jewelry that I wouldn’t be able to wear and just stuck hidden in a drawer. It’s very simple.

You need the following:

8×10 canvas (or any size of your preference)

Lots of jewelry pieces.

needle nose pliers

Gorilla clear fast drying glue

Now you could use E6000 glue and I know that’s a preference for most crafters and I do like it a lot as well. But for this particular project, I like the clear Gorilla glue because it’s fast dryer and it really is able to handle holding up those heavy pieces of jewelry, and the last thing I want is pieces falling off over time.

I started by drawing a heart with a pencil. I used a necklace to create a clean line with the outer walls but you don’t have to do it like that. You can just use the jewelry to form the shape.

Now place your larger pieces down first so that you can build around them with the smaller ones. I wanted the cross in the center so I placed that one first.

It had a pin back AND a hook to wear it as a necklace, so I popped that off very easily with my pliers.

Once I had my largest pieces arranged and used their natural curves to make the top of the heart then I placed smaller pieces. Some I broke down even more so I can use a single stone to fill in a void. I had a bracelet with my moms name, so I tore that up so I just had the name part and placed it within the heart. It really makes it super special having her name in it. I even tore up an old Brighton watch that she wore and just included the watch face.

The finished product! Took a total of 45 minutes. Now I’m off to Hobby Lobby to get a really cool frame for it. I absolutely love it! You can easily recreate this with broken jewelry, jewelry from thrift stores, antique stores. It’s a cool way to make art.