CRINOIDS!

One of my favourite cab suppliers (Heart of Stone Studio) had these amazing crinoid fossils. Crinoids are lovely and graceful-looking sea creatures that resemble fern-like plants but are really animals. Commonly called sea lilies, they're Echinoderms, relatives of sea urchins and starfish, and they are one of Nature's success stories, having been around for 530 million years. Ancient Crinoids sported feathery arms sprouting from a stalk anchored on the ocean floor, while their modern descendants mostly don't have stalks. Their soft , filter-feeding bodies are supported by a framework calcium carbonate segments called ossicles, and it's the ossicles that you see in these fossils.

I needle-felted a bezel around the fossil (bit of a mission!) and gave it a UV resin frame (adding some stability around the stone) - plus it looks like natural diamond/rock....
The ring base is Faux Bone with sterling silver tube rivets and the 'tendrils' are sterling silver wire wrapping (part LOS) with natural freshwater pearls in pink and white on the ends (again from Heart of Stone Studio).

The Faux bone ring base is not a complete circle - so the wool 'jewel' can sit inside and it is held in place with some rough black cotton stitching!

This was an experiment as I had been thinking about how I could hold a stone/cab in place using felt - and it seems to work nicely so I will be taking it on further probably. Although I'm now learning to crochet - so expect some woolly scarves to be posted soon...!