The Mystery Thing Revealed: It Was Fate.

Hi!  For the past few days, my readers and I have been playing an exciting round of GUESS THE MYSTERY THING, a game of wits and crafty intuition.  The challenge: identify the original source of the little twisty leaves in this upcycled necklace:

Think you know?  Betcha don't!

Before the reveal, please enjoy a few of the least accurate but still brilliant entries.  Mich's Honor Roll of The Most Creative (Totally Wrong) Guesses:

Periwinkle Dzyns: absolutely definitely that gelatin layer Costco puts on top of their pumpkin pies at holiday time!
Marie: melted down false fingernails?
Square Feet: shed snakeskin.
Amy: loincloths for albino pygmy mice.  Or cutouts from lampshades you are no longer putting on your head and dancing with.
Betsy: little albino troll tongues.
Peaches: aardvark toenails.
Kerry: leaves from a plastic tree you have growing in the back yard.
Melissa: the petals on the plastic insertion thingy for tampons (just because you said it is strange even for you). 
Lisbonlioness: I do realize that Gollum is an unwholesome fellow, but pulling out his toenails is just...wrong. Plus, this necklace will smell faintly of algae and will be a tad slimy to the touch. Have you no heart, woman?
Anne P: you have cast a spell on some beautiful leaf and frozen it, like magic!

Heeheeha!  My powers are legend.

On to the reveal!  Here's what happened.  On the morning after Halloween, I came out onto my lawn...to be confronted with one of the Fates, tangled in my ferns!

(Or is she one of Macbeth's witches?  Whoever this is, she could use a couple of procedures.)  I tell you, it really gave me a turn!  Was this my destiny?  To be forever trapped in an endless cycle of finding crap on the ground and turning it into strange jewelry?

All I can say is...I hope so.

The DIY is easy and fun.  Just use small scissors, find some nice vein-like contours that look leafy, and snip away.  You can draw the shapes first, or just wing it.

Those are all teeny - but try different sizes, too.  And experiment with shapes and vein direction; I think the one in front looks like an insect wing.

To use them as beads or dangles, poke tiny holes with a pushpin, or melt larger ones with a heated poker.

I plan to use the little bitty ones for all kinds of leafy jewels.  They'd make very cute earrings, or dangles on a charm bracelet.

And here's what I did with a few of the larger leaves: nifty curvy pendants!

Well, that's the answer!  Hope you guys had fun playing.  But wait, there remains one last, very important item of business...

Who guessed the Mystery Thing????

Nobody, that's who!  I win!  I win!  I am doing a happy dance in the crafty end zone.  I am slamming a hot glue gun into the turf.  Boo.  YAH.

Winners!  Due to everyone's disgraceful lack of knowing the right answer, random.org has chosen two lucky duckies to win a necklace.  Congrats to Blue Lunar and Meijo's JOY!  Watch for my email, coming soon.

Thanks once again, my dearies, for throwing yourselves into it and entertaining me so much.  Your destiny decrees that you come back next time and play again.  Defy it at your peril.


*****
p.s. to last week's winner Shawna B...I sent you several emails, they are probably hanging out in your spam.  Can you email me directly with your address?  I want to send you your loot!