New Necklace and News

I made this necklace back in November, as a thank you gift for my baby shower host. Yes, that's the news I'm expecting my first child. I'm due in February and it has been a whirlwind of a time getting everything ready.

I had to dig through my picture folders to find the images, but here is the necklace. I've got a shot of the full design along with an up close detail shot of the pendant.

I created the copper spirals by twisting square wire with my pin vise before making the spirals. The two on the necklace are stand alone while the one against the stone is part of the wire going through the stone. The wire is 21 gauge which I picked up at my local bead store along with the stone. The crystals, clasp, and fiber optic beads I purchased from Rings and Things. The silver colored bugle beads I bought from Artbeads awhile back. I do have copper beads from Rings and Things, but I felt they would have hidden the spirals. This way the spirals stand out more.

Tips and Techniques: necklace finishing.

This is something I've been thinking about posting for awhile, and after fixing some older pieces this weekend I figured this would be a good time. While I do use various clasp types this post applies to lobster class. What I like about this method of finishing is that it gives a bit of flexibility to a design, allowing the length to vary some. Very handy to adjust for different outfits.

The chain you use is important. It needs to be lighter weight to stay in back. It also needs to be strong. Soldered links work wonders for this task. When I used to buy necklace extenders locally they didn't have soldered links and some have come apart. Now I have three spools of chain I use for finishing. They are curb chain with soldered links, and the gauge isn't to heavy. The links also have a large enough opening to allow the clasp to clip a link. This is the antiqued copper plated one I use. I have all three spools in with my tool kit so they are ready to go when finishing a necklace.

I also like to add a bead to the end of the chain. That way if the clasp misses a link and goes around the chain it still holds onto the necklace. I put the bead on a headpin, then I attach it to the end of the chain with a wrapped loop. The bead does have to be larger than the inside of the clasp, and I like to choose one that matches the design.

Example of how this looks on a design: The chain is attached to the necklace on one end via a split ring, and has a the bead on the other end. The split ring is large enough so the clasp can be attached there if wanted. I also prefer split rings over jump rings because I've have stringing material slip out of jump rings before.

Closeup of the clasp and extender:

Bracelet in Progress

I know that it has been awhile since I've posted much here. I was focusing on my writing blog for April's A to Z challenge, then after that I've been a bit quiet on the blog front.

Anyways I wanted to share what I'm working on currently. I picked out some new beads for my anniversary Tuesday and I decided to work with them tonight.

Walking on Sunshine

And don't it feel good :)

Yes, I couldn't help it. I've had this song stuck in my head since I decided to buy the Walking on Sunshine crystal jam. And here's more of what I've made with it. They were more of a 'garnish' if you will on the leaf necklace, for these pieces the crystals are a more integral part of the designs. The earrings came first then I made a necklace to match.

For the earrings I strung the crystals on yellow Soft Flex to bring out the fun warm tones of the crystals.

And here is the necklace. In addition to the crystals I added some Czech glass beads and some little peanut shaped clear beads. I had hoped that the yellow Soft Flex would show through the peanut beads, but that didn't go quite as planned. I still like how this turned out though.

The whole necklace. I used some of my curb chain to make an extender, putting a glass round bead on the end for the clasp to catch if it misses a link. I like making my own extenders with the handy spools of chain from Rings and Things. This curb chain has soldered links, which adds strength. I have some extenders I picked up locally which have broken because they don't have soldered links.

Take our design challenge!

Take our design challenge!

Check out the above link, Rings and Things has a contest going to win some nice copper beads.

Necklace Hanger

I started making these years ago, but this is the first time I made one with square wire as the base instead of round. This one also turned out better than some of my earlier attempts. I bought the square wire at Rings and Things (it is hard to find non-round base metal wire).

And here is another shot one from the side to show the hooks off a little better.

Tool wise I used my chain nose pliers to make the right angle bends in the wire, my round nose pliers to shape the hooks and start the spirals, and I used my nylon jaw pliers to finish the spirals.

Finished Necklace

From the work in progress I posted earlier, here is the finished piece.

That's what the whole necklace looks like, with the beads all the way around.

And here is a close up shot of the pendant portion of the necklace. I'm not sure why, but Blogger rotated it on me in the upload process.

Off topic, but I decided not to try posting via my phone this time around. I used the camera for better pictures, then I put the SD card into my netbook. I love how the netbook has the SD reader, and using the Windows 7 version of MS Paint worked pretty well for resizing/cropping the images. Well it wouldn't let me use the crop button. I ended up selecting the whole image, moving it up and to the left, then dragging the canvas to where I wanted to "crop" the bottom and right side.