Chain – Bead Yarn & Spatula

While I do have a few projects sitting on my knitting and crocheting needles, I decided to take a small break this week from working on them to make a few jewelry pieces.

I made this necklace about a year ago and unfortunately the chain I used has started to tarnish. I tried to clean it but it was to no avail, the tarnish is here to stay, so, I decided to remake it.

To replace the chain sections I decided to use some glass pearls and natural shell beads I had in my collection strung on flexible beading wire. I’m always happy when I can use things I already have. So many times I find myself buying more items to create things as opposed to utilizing what’s in my collection.

For the first section of the necklace I used three different sizes of the glass pearls arranging them from largest to smallest.

While the second section remained the same as the original necklace, I updated the third section – which used to be chain – with more glass pearls and the natural shell beads.

And here’s the completed necklace. At first I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but, once I tried it on I was much happier with it than I ever was with the original one.

Up next I worked on a necklace that I got the idea from while I was out shopping one day. I liked the necklace I saw, but wasn’t too keen on the colors it was made with. I wanted something a little brighter and summery. It’s made up of alternating sections of seed beads and chain.

Supplies for this necklace are pretty basic; size 6 seed beads, two different styles of chains, jump rings and eye pins. In lieu of the eye pins you could use a medium gauge beading wire.

I started off by creating the sections of seed beads by threading fifteen seed beads onto each eye pin. I had already mapped out the pattern I wanted to follow so I knew I needed eight stacks of the green and white beads and four of the blue beads. The nice thing about using the eye pins is that I only needed to create a loop on one side as opposed to two sides had I used beading wire.

Following that I used jump rings to combine two stacks of each color. The stacks were about two inches long.

Now I was ready to cut the two chain styles into two inch sections and attach four pieces of the chain (two pieces of each chain style) to jump rings.

I had a feeling that the necklace was going to be on the long side so I only connected half of it to get an idea how long it was going to be. And I was right, this one half of the necklace was approximately twenty-seven inches long so I knew I had to make some modifications.

I ended up re-doing the bead stacks by eliminating five seed beads on each one and re-cutting the chain to match the new length of the bead stacks – approximately one and a half inches. The necklace ended up being about forty inches.

And finally I used some of the bead strands I got at the bead show I went to last month along with some chain I had to create this final piece.

First off I created the bead portion of the necklace by stringing the beads onto flexible beading wire. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use spacer beads or daisy spacers between the beads but once I started stringing I realized the daisy spacers were a better fit.