Triple Beaded Necklace

I thought I'd already done a post for this, but apparently I haven't.

My mum spotted a necklace in M&S. She liked the style, but the colours didn't match what the person she was buying for liked so I volunteered to make something for her, in the required green. It turned out I didn't actually have a lot of green beads in my stash.  I asked what other colours she liked: "orange, black, ivory, lemon". This isn't a great combination, so I decided on dark green, amber, and black (the recipient is a green-eyed redhead). Then I went shopping.

It turned out I could buy beads individually at Beads Unlimited, so I went searching for a selection of oval, round, and faceted beads in my chosen colours. The next step was to figure out how I wanted to string them.



On the original necklace the beads were strung on transparent cord, with black cord knotted around them. I'd decided not to replicate this as it was fiddly and also meant some of the beads didn't hang right. I'd decided to string directly onto the main cord instead. Unfortunately I'm a really bad judge of size, so the beads turned out to be smaller than I expected. This wasn't a problem, except I had to go hunting for cord thin enough to string them on, and that meant the cord of the necklace would be thinner than I wanted and risk digging into the wearers neck.

In the end I stuck to the plan of stringing the beads onto their separate cords and knotting between them, and then plaiting the three threads together to make the rest of the necklace a bit thicker. This was the result.



For the clasp I made a loop in the cord, and added a random, reasonably-sized, green bead from my stash as the toggle. You can't see in the picture, but it has a spiral pattern.



One minor tweak later (moving the green beads by the toggle down to where the cords meet in the second picture) and it was ready to go.

Fox Brooch Jewellery Project

I've decided to try and blog about my jewellery projects once a month. Not only will it give me something to post about, but having to post about it will keep me making things to post about. I'm hoping it will help to keep the momentum up on both of them.

This month's project is a brooch I made for my grandmother at the beginning of the year. She loves foxes, and I found this little critter on Etsy.



It's quite chunky, so I thought the best thing to go with was a brooch. At first I was going to hang chain from the loops on the pin and dangle leaves like it was hiding among the foliage, but it pretty quickly became obvious this was unworkable. Whatever I hung from the chain would strike the fox, and probably damage it.



So I got rid of the chain. Not damaging the fox was a major consideration here, as was the fact that glass is quite heavy and I wanted to keep the weight of the brooch down or it could damage the clothes it was worn on. Being a hoarder I have lots of leaf charms. Glass ones were out, and the lucite ones were too big. I have several light metal ones, mostly in silver. However I thought the ones pictured above complemented the fox best, as they're quite small and in a sympathetic colour.

Because it was a woodland scene I wanted to add some flowers, and picked some tiny lucite ones because they're light. I went for red to go with the warm colour scheme, and added a silver butterfly for contrast.

And here's the finished piece.

Out of the Blue

And then, out of the blue, someone bought a pair of my earrings. It's a cute little pair of dangles made out of watch parts, and I'll be making a trip to the post office tomorrow to mail them.

There's been so much else going on lately, I have to admit to neglecting Etsy a little bit. I've got finished items to list, unfinished items to finish, half-thought-out designs to work on.... Mostly its a problem of daylight - in that I need it to take photos before listing anything, and I also prefer working in it to artificial light. Hopefully things will improve now we're on the upward haul to Spring.

Last week I tried to put some glass charms on faux-suede cords, but managed to cut both cords too short so they're more like chokers. I'll try again this weekend, and use the original cords for bracelets instead. I also made some charm bookmarks the other day. No photos yet (daylight!), but I really enjoyed making them and am trying to think of people to make more for.

New Technique: Chain maille

One of the things I love about making jewellery is that there's so much to learn. I've a list of techniques and materials I want to try as long as my arm: polymer clay, needle felting, shrink plastic, other acrylics.

A technique that I did try recently was chain maille. Most of the examples I've seen have looked quite daunting - Byzantine and Japanese for example - and while the results are lovely I don't think I have the patience. However, I saw a reasonably simple project in a magazine (I can't for the life of me remember which one, but I'll dig it out at home for a proper credit). It involved a set of simple two-by-four-by-two links strung between beads on eyepins.

I already had the beads I wanted to use (foil lined purple glass beads, and glass amethyst beads from Beads Direct), and a random selection of bead caps from various places, so I stocked up on about 200 8mm silver jump rings and got to work.

The first thing I discovered is chain maille, even the simple stuff, is hard. Not just keeping track of where the rings are (and this was fairly simple) but also in opening an closing all those jump rings. If I'm going to make it a regular thing I'll need to invest in a jump ring tool or a second set of flat-nosed pliers. Opening by hand and pliers just won't cut it - after a very short time my fingers ached and my nails were shredded. I switched to round-nosed pliers in my other hand (the only alternative I had) but that was fiddly and awkward.

The easiest way to get through the large number of jump rings to link was to do them in sections and link to beads with 5mm rings as I went. That kept it from getting too tedious. It turned out I had enough beads to do two short necklaces. I did try for one long one, but the amount of glass made it far too heavy.

After this there were still quite a few of the of the smaller beads left, so I made a bracelet and earrings to complete the set.

I don't [heart] Mondays

At the weekend I got a surprise parcel - a needle felting kit won in a jewellery magazine competition. I've never done any felting before, so it's great to get to try something new for free. However, felt beads will probably prove too tempting for the cats to resist so it'll have to wait until I have a plan for what to do with them first. I've already got ideas for some earrings.

With it being Valentine's Day tomorrow, I thought I'd post about another Valentine-themed piece. A little while ago I spotted these in a random jewellery shop, of the sort that doesn't normally sell parts.

Normally I find hearts a bit twee, but I've recently become addicted to glass beads, and these are just great. The hole is drilled from top to bottom. They only had assorted colours of the large ones, and they only had the small ones in blue, so I already had an idea for the blue ones even as I was picking them out.





The idea was to string the small beads on eye pins, and link them with chain, two to a side. That does mean there's an extra small bead lying around, which will probably end up on the Millefiori charm bracelet I'm making. So far I don't have a clue what do do with the remaining large beads, maybe they'll end up on a charm bracelet of their own.


The holes are drilled top to bottom, which was fine for the ones on eyepins, but a bit big for a headpin on the larger bead. So I used an eyepin, and made a dangle with some silver chain and small blue beads on headpins. The finished product:

A black and white Valentine

What with Valentine's Day coming up, I thought I'd do a post about one of my Valentine-related pieces.

It came about because I randomly picked up some black and white coated chain in the Beads Direct sale. I thought it looked interesting, and when it turned up it was more interesting than I'd expected - the links are huge!

I decided to make the most of that fact, and wove some silver chain in and out of the links, and fixed it at each end with a jump ring, with a silver clasp at one end and a length of the coated chain at the other to serve as an extender.

To match the monotone feel of the necklace, I dug out some of the black, clear, and smokey grey glass charms from the batch in the last post. They're supposed to be leaves, but I think they look like hearts.

And there you have it - a bracelet for someone who likes their romance a little less pink and sweet. :)

Introduction

Back in November, I stumbled into making jewellery.

Stumbled is the right word, really. I was browsing Etsy, looking for a Steampunk necklace. I bought one I liked, then somehow ended up buying some charms and findings as well. Before I knew it I'd added to the collection: beads, more charms, charity shop finds to dismantle. A couple of magazines later and I was making my own necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

This wasn't one of my first projects, but it's the one that means most to me so far. When I was eight or so I had a leaf charm bracelet. It jangled with metal and plastic charms in dark colours, bronze and purple. I loved it, but it was quite conspicuous and I was not a confident child. I stopped wearing it, and because I wasn't wearing it eventually got rid of it.

I've really regretted it, and taking up making my own jewellery seemed to be the perfect cue to replicate at least the feel of that long-gone bracelet. I bought some glass leaf charms...

... and some antiqued bronze charms from Etsy, and along with some charms taken from charity-shop necklaces I made this.

The chain is a shortened charity shop find in an antique colour. It's not the same as the bracelet I used to have, but it jangles pleasantly and I really like wearing it. It's a little heavy on the bronze charms at the moment, but I aim to replace sme of them as I come across other leaf charms I like. On the whole I'm very pleased with it though.