Last month a friend ask me if I could make a necklace for her wedding. I told her that I didn’t have any experience making necklaces but I would try. She showed me some pictures of what she had in mind and I started to play with the materials, trying to figure out how to make the necklace. And I did.
In the end she loved the necklace and I ended up with a pretty fun and easy technique for making this sort of necklaces. Almost as easy as making earrings!
This one we are making now is made with fall colors to wear it for Halloween but you can make it in any color you want and with any kind of beads you prefer.
Tools
First you need to have the right tools.
I use 2 different pliers. A side-cutting pliers (a) and a flat-nose pliers (b). You can get them in any hardware store or crafts store.
Materials
You also need some beads and some findings (the metal parts of jewelery).
For this necklace we’ll use large seed beads in orange (c1), white (c2) and black (c3).
We will also use the thinest stainless steel nylon coated wire (d) that I could buy: .018 diameter
And two pinch caps (e), two 2 mm crimp beads (f) and one lobster clasp (g).
Making the necklace
To start we cut 2 strands of wire (d) of approximately 65 cm.
Next we thread the first bead and put it approx. in the middle of the strand without bending the wire. When this wire is bent it holds its shape and we don’t want that right know.
Next we take an end of the wire and, holding the bead in place, we thread it again and pull, trapping the bead in place on the wire. Lets call it “double thread and pull”.
Next we continue to double thread and pull beads, always from the middle of the necklace to the ends.
Repeat colors and change the space between beads. Make it as “random looking” as you can.
You can try different beads and colors. The only thing you have to remember is that you need to buy beads that have a big enough hole to “double thread”.
Once we have the first strand of wire made we start the second. It’s just the same as the first but we want to avoid obvious matching of beads and of gaps between beads. Remember, we are going for a random look here! So we use the other strand to visually guide us about what NOT to do next.
We end up with something like what we see in this the next picture.
Next we take the pinch caps (e) and we cut the little curl they have on top. We do this in both pinch caps.
We take the two strands of wire, now beaded, and hold both ends of one side.
We insert the two ends in one pinch cap (e), like we see in the picture below.
And then we take one crimp bead (f) and insert it after the pinch cap (e).
At this point we have one end of the necklace with a pinch cap (e) and a crimp bead (f).
Now we have to bend the two ends of the necklace and insert them in the crimp bead.
This way we have a loop.
We take the flat-nose pliers (b) and crush the crimp bead to hold the loop in place.
With the side-cutting pliers (a) we cut the excess wire.
And the first end loop is in place.
We bring the pinch cap to the crushed crimp bead.
And close it with the flat-nose pliers, just like a little clam shell. This end of the necklace is done!
Now we take the two ends of the other side of the necklace and insert them in the other pinch cap (e) and we take the other crimp bead (f) and insert it after the pinch cap, just like we did before.
Here’s what’s different. Before we make the loop we insert the lobster clasp (g).
THEN we make the loop, crush the crimp bead, cut the excess wire and close the pinch cap, just like the first end of the necklace.
Tada! You have a pretty necklace and a cool technique to use with any other beads!
I made a variation of this with three strands of wire, one in each color. The only thing we have to do different is to get larger crimp beads so that we can make the end loops with 3 strands. 2,5 mm crimp beads should do the trick!
And remember, if at first you don’t succeed don’t be discouraged. I used a lot of cable wire before I got nice results. You can do it. You just have to practice.
TIP: Try it with Swarovski crystals, for a more shiny and expensive look.
Think of all the Christmas gifts you will do this year just by mastering this simple technique!! *wink*
If you like this tutorial you might also like to learn how to make earrings!