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.

Wraparound Bracelets

Last month in Making Jewellery there was a feature by Clair Wolfe on wrap bracelets. Since I'm, for reasons previously mentioned, trying to move away from metal a bit more it was a really interesting technique to learn.


The premise is simple - a doubled-over leather cord, tied off to make a clasp, with beads strung between the two lengths. Here's what I've come up with in the last couple of weeks.

 

This is the first one I made, with 6mm wooden beads in two colours, imitation turquoise, and some blue-dyed freshwater pearls. The button clasp comes from an old coat.

After this I made three destash bracelets.

The first has a selection of random beads in wood and acrylic (purple, blue, imitation haematite and silver). They're quite chunky, and the bracelet wraps twice although it's too big to fit around my wrist.

For the second, I had some faceted blue acrylic beads, and decided to pair them with dark blue glass, and green semi-precious stones, to try and convey the feeling of light on water. The stones are flourite, I think, from an old elasticated bracelet. I used pale beige thread to keep it light.

This one wraps around three times and uses the rest of the 6mm wooden beads, as well as some wooden cubes and rondelles from a dismantled bracelet.








And then I made one for my boyfriend, because he complained I never make him anything, using 1cm beads in imitation turquoise, tiger's eye nuggets, glass cubes, and some leftover black and copper glass beads.

Things in Bronze

Since my sulk-sabbatical, I seem to have recovered my passion for making jewellery. I've gone mad for wraparound bracelets lately but I haven't taken any pictures of those so I'll post about the things I made with bronze findings instead.

Last weekend I sat down with a pile of my bronze bits and pieces and decided to make an effort to use some of them. As well as the usual findings there were also bronze charms, pendants, and bronze-coloured acrylic beads.

The first thing I made was a matching necklace and earring set, with a simple design of an acrylic heart and some red beads. It occured to me while I was making them that I'm lucky I didn't rediscover my problem with metals while I was wearing earrings. That could have been unpleasant.

Then I sat down with a big pile of beads I'd planned to make myself a bracelet with, and made a longline necklace buy stinging selections onto eyepins and linking them with short lengths of figaro chain.

Then I made a pair of matching earrings, as I like to make sets.

Apologies for thequality of that last picture. Blogger wouldn't upload it, so I've linked directly from Etsy.

lThere are still loads of bronze things left to use, and plenty of brass too. Lots to do in future!