While going through some papers I found a magazine rip out of a necklace that I liked and wanted to make – a long gold-tone necklace with semi-precious teardrop gems and pearls. I didn’t have those exact components, but, I did have blue/yellow swirl glass teardrops and gold seed beads. While I did have glass pearls as well I didn’t like how they looked with the teardrops and seed beads. So I opted to go with coral glass oval beads which I found at my local Joann’s.
My supplies.
I got to work on making the necklace and decided to place six size 10 seed beads between alternating teardrop and oval beads using gold beading wire. I made two of these strands in different lengths and attached them to a double-strand toggle.
And here’s the finished product.
Unfortunately I wasn’t too happy with how it came out. I didn’t like how the necklace was hanging with the double-strand toggle. Also, my strand length wasn’t proportioned well between the two strands so I felt that the longer strand was too long. And finally, the seed beads I used weren’t the best quality so the gold tone began to rub off. So, I decided to make the necklace again.
This time I used TOHO Size 11 Gold Seed Beads that I got at my local Michaels store. I’ve used TOHO seed beads in the past and have never had a problem with them fading so I knew they were a safe bet.
I got to working on the necklace once again and opted to use a single strand toggle this time in hopes that the necklace would hang better.
I was much happier with the necklace the second time around. Using a single strand toggle meant crimping both strands together which provided the weight for the necklace to hang better. To correct the problem of the strand length I decided to leave the shorter length as is and removed two each of the teardrop and oval beads and twenty-four of the seed beads.
Bead Yarn & Spatula 