My inspiration for this scene is from a fossilized muskrat skull I own. (Yes, I collect weird things)

I made some basic orthogonal model sheets for the skull and modeled the basic shape of the object. I reference the actual skull for the details. I created a tileable bone texture with a diffuse and bump map. I unwrapped the UVs on this skull, which took some time.

I decided to make a jewelry scene; with natural, tumbled stones for beads. These were created by using the lattice modifier on circular splines. Each string of beads was modified a bit differently to create unique beads. I then created a tileable stone texture for each string.

Finally, I created the claw pendent. It’s a curved cone with a modified base. It uses the same texture as the skull, but the claw has another layer of texture that makes it etched.