5 Year Wedding Anniversary Present (2010)

My wife and I are celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary this Friday! I looked it up and found out online that this is the "Wood" anniversary. I thought to my self "PERFECT"!! I thought fora while and decided to try my hand at jewelry making. What came of this was a necklace made from Black Walnut and Box Elder, Two Appalachian hardwoods. Box Elder is a cousin to the Maple and often has beautiful red streaking in it. the piece I chose had some nice figure of tiger striping but very little red. Below is a step by step photo shoot of the fabrication of this necklace.

Her is what I started out with. The piece on the left is the Box Elder and the piece on the right is The Black Walnut. I drilled a 1 1/8" hole into the black walnut to insert a turned plug of the box elder.
Here is a photo of the Box Elder plug next to the Walnut. I burned the edges a little which created a nice black line between the two pieces of wood.
Next I glued the Box Elder into the Wanut with the Box Elder Skewed at an angle from the Walnut grain.
The blank all glued up. What I forgot to show was that the next step was to scribe an off center circle on the Walnut surrounding the Box Elder. I then cut out a turning blank based on this circle.
Here is the blank chucked up and ready for turning!
This photo shows the face of the necklace turned.
The next step was to apply some finish to the face of the necklace.
this photo shows some of the back side being turned.
Once I sanded the back side I parted it from the rest of the blank and finished sanding and coating it. I also drilled a small hole to receive the leather cord. Here is a look at the finished product with a blurry close up shot following!