!!!Help!!! needed with making native turquoise necklace

[bcguys]

Hi
I have some blue turquoise stone, barrel shaped (22mm x 16mm) and blue rough oval nuggets, heavy in copper veins (15mm x 15mm) and smaller blue nuggets (10mm x 10mm).  I have spent hours looking for spacer beads and some focal beads to put in a necklace that will have an American Indian appearance.  I have been trying to get charms from a Navajo charm bracelet and I have also looked at crazy horse stone (from limestone).  Would the crazy horse stone be too light for the heavy barrel stones in the necklace?  Or would that help to keep the overall weigh of the necklace down.  Any ideas of necklace design or materials would be appreciated. thanks

[Russ Nobbs]

Welcome to our forums!!

I'm glad to see you don't give us a tough question for  your first post!   

Without having your beads in my hands or spread out on my table I have a terrible time helping design.
For a "Native American" look I can suggest looking at a site with a lot of good turquoise in Santo Domingo Pueblo designs at http://www.skystonetrading.com/pueblo-jewelry-4/  Most of these are heishi based. Another page http://www.skystonetrading.com/all-necklaces-20/ has a few more nuggety designs.

A focal pendant might help but what sort would you like?
I've used small silver or silver colored metal heishi as spacers. Dee restrung one of my necklaces with small vulcanite (African plastic black heishi wafers) as spacers, just to keep the beads apart at the center of the necklace.

I'd not pick Crazy Horse stone to use with turquoise but I''ve seen some Oregon picture jasper in similar colors but bolder patterns that worked well with turquoise. So it might work well either as a center stone or accents.

I don't think I've been a lot of help for you tonight. Maybe someone can jump in who can picture your beads better than I?  If you have a LBS (local bead store) you might find some advice from stringers there when they  can handle your turquoise.

[daverobertson]

Here's a Facebook comment from Diane Crow-Brown about this thread.