One woman's adventures in the land of hand made jewellery

Thursday 26 May 2011

Handmade Thursday...


..or any other day in my case but as Thursday is the last day before the weekend here in Dubai and a day when not much happens in my otherwise busy schedule I usually get more time to be creative. So when I stumbled across White Lily's blog and her Handmade Thursdays I couldn't resist sharing it with you nor posting something from me!


Today has been no exception in the extending chain of Thursdays so far in 2011, some further work on an as yet unfinished silver clay peapod pendant this morning. Then I also fired and burnished a couple of tiny squiggly square bits of clay ready for some future earrings, made two necklaces and a saucepan of vegtable soup and that was just my mornings efforts.

The first necklace was my entry in a challenge (see today's previous post) whilst the necklace pictured above is made from some beads I found amongst a huge second hand lot I bought on eBay a few months ago. These ''beads'' (they are not exactly round) are big chunks of pink resin, some clear and some frosted. Surprisingly for their size they weigh very little. I've teamed them up with some gold-coloured, wavy plastic spacers, 60cms of fancy cream giftwrap chord, a couple of smaller gold-coloured metal beads with large holes and a gold-coloured toggle fastening. The latter was bought in Texas when I was there last year. It was also an opportunity to practise some knots rather than using jump rings or other mechanical means to join components together!

If you want to have a go at something like this, here is how I assembled it.
  • First wrap some sticky tape tightly round either end of the chord to stop it fraying as you thread it through the beads. Double up the chord and thread both ends through the chunky beads adding a gold spacer after each one, I alternated the frosted and clear beads. 
  • Use a sheetbend to join the ends of the chord together and apply a little clear nail varnish or superglue to hold the knot firm. Adjust the chord so that the knot sits close to one of the end beads and when you hold it up by the two loops the central bead is in the middle. 
  • Next thread on a few more spacers to cover the knot on one side, add a metal bead. Then add spacers and a metal bead to the other side to match. 
  • Taking the doubled chord tie a series of three overhand knots close to the beads on either side to hold everything in place (more if you need to shorten the necklace length), then push each loop through the eye in the fastening and pull over the fastening to create a larkshead knot.
One Pink Chunks or is that Punk Chicks necklace!

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4 comments:

  1. Wow - clever you, that looks totally professional. My jewellery making I've shared today basically involved glueing one thing to another thing!

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  2. Wow! That is beautiful! I adore the colours!! Gorgeous!!! Thank you so much for linking up! I'm glad you found us! :)

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  3. You've had a busy day!!

    Love the beads - surprised to read they are resin, they looked like rose quartz to me LOL.

    Nice to meet you via Handmade Thursday x

    @missielizzieb

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  4. That's a beautiful bracelet! Might try making something similar if I'm feeling adventurous one day. :O)

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