I got the idea for the necklace from another necklace that just sort of happened a day in front of the tv set. I liked the idea of a ‘random’ pearl necklace with, of course, crystals, and in the beginning there were pendants of hearts both back and front in different colors but it quickly came out way to blingy and a little tacky, so I toned down the multicoloring and lost the pendants and was quite happy with it. The only pendantish bead left on it was a small AB tinted flower.


The whole lot are Swarovskis, which I get at Perles & Co where they are reasonably priced. That said, this is easily the most expensive necklace I’ve ever made.


I can’t remember where I first saw the backdrop necklaces, but I’m guessing a photo of some 30s willowy beauty. Alas, I am myself not of the willowy kind, and a silky 30s gown with open back was very much out of the question (it would also have required me smoking vogue cigarettes with a black ivory cigarette holder and, well, there are a few problems with that scenario).

Anyways. The necklace is strung on nylon and has an odd shape since you need a strand going around your neck, otherwise it won’t stay on your back. Unless you make it waaaaay longer and move very carefully. The neck strand has a silver heart clasp to allow you to put it on, and this is how it all turned out:

Whoa! Almost eight months since my last post? Really? I blame the wedding. And the moving of web hotels. But mostly the wedding. The wedding was on June 12th, a beautiful though a little rainy Saturday in county Dalarna. Of course, there was quite a lot of crafty things going into this wedding and I plan on blogging them all here, but I’ll start with the most recently created: the wedding picture vintage style necklace.

 

 

In the photo you can see the finished result and the photo I started with. I cropped the photo and turned it black and white with Picasa, printed it on photo paper, glued it to the photo jewellery plate and covered it with a random scrapbooking thing D gave me once, something called “Sepia accents”, a glue-like medium that is slightly pink-orangeish and dries to resemble resin. Above it I made a wire link with two Swarovski beads, some of the one I used to make my actual wedding necklace. Added a dragonfly pendant to the chain and that’s it.

For my birthday last spring I got a present from my sister in law and her family; to choose lampwork beads from Babs Beads and Design. Susanne, lampwork artist and friend of sister in law C, makes little works of art out of glass and I particularly like her hearts. A few days ago I finally managed to choose and order some beads and when they arrived yesterday I immediately crafted an idea I got the other day.

I’ve bought a few sample packs of photo and print paper at Kjell & co, since they cost next to nothing and contain a few fun paper styles I’m too cheap to buy full packages of. Among other things they contain t-shirt print paper and I got the idea to make necklaces with printed text on them – I love music (who doesn’t) and the lyrics to music are always important to me and I would love to carry lyrics as visible decoration too, since they decorate my life so much.

For a while I couldn’t do much about it, I couldn’t find narrow enough cotton ribbon and the textile print paper won’t stick on satin ribbon, and also none of the designs popping around in my head really made me want to sit down and do anything about it. But the other day I found 3 mm wide white cotton ribbon, surfed on Babs Art fire page and voilá knew how I wanted it.

So here it is: official Christmas necklace of 2009!

Working with the textile transfer paper was a little trickier than I had thought (or, actually, I hadn’t thought much about it at all). Since you can’t see the printed side once you put it down and then placed the iron over it, tiny things like 2,8 mm text can get displaced. And when you’re on a 3 mm ribbon, there is no room for displacement. If you think before you do you may get it right the first time. If you’re more like me – try first, think, try again, repeat until it works – here’s a tip about what I’ve learned:

It’s spring in some parts of the world, for example in NZ, where B lives with her husband C and their kids A and LB and also Nana D. All of them except for C also celebrate their birthdays in spring, which is a good excuse to make necklaces for everyone!

Everyone, that is, but C. There is just nothing I can make out of the stuff I have in my beadboxes that would not look silly on this man – or, come to think of it, most men. I’m not very conservative in what men and women should or should not wear and do, but scroll down the gallery and try to imagine any of the designs on any grown man. Jewellery on men – absolutely! Beaded jewellery on men? Not so easy…

Anyways, for the others I toted together some things. For A, who is 4 and, I gather, a rather cool dude and big brother I made a necklace of faux grey stone and silver-and-turqoise desert sun beads. It has a magnetic clasp so there is no danger of it hurting him if it should get stuck on something while he’s climbing and running around. Little sister LB is 2 and for her I made a Y-shaped necklace in pink and white with a swarovski heart and pink lilies leading down to it, and for their mother B  an affirmation ring necklace for Love. Nana got a longer version of one of my own favourites that I hope ‘goes with everything’ for her too.

Hope you have a lovely spring and summer, guys, I miss you!

Dream and love and love and dream – these are two necklaces for a mother-daughter combo. They are made in the same mode as the previous one in this post, but with the addition of a separate pendant a bit up the chain on both. To make sure the necklace keeps its ‘shape’ with the extra pendant on the side I’ve secured the main pendant with a thin wire so that it won’t move around on the chain.

The pink, silver and turquoise one is for little m and the black, silver and dark peacock one for mother m. I like that I managed to find both affirmation rings and tags to match ‘diagonally’ for them both.

Ok,  pink-and-gold are not my usual colours, but this necklace just made itself in my hands!

It is of collier length, strung on nylon string. The heart is approx 25 mm across and both that and the little butterfly above it is in the yellowish crystal AB. In the necklace are various glass beads in light nougat, dark green, rose gold and pink, as well as a lot of 4mm swarovskis in ‘Light Coloroade Topaz’ and ‘Sand Opal’. Plus one in the rose-reddish, beautiful colour ‘Padparadscha’.

Now I’ll just have to make the earrings to match it.

This is a necklace for a lady I know, who is really really old and really really cool. It’s strung on nylon, and has a magnetic clasp so it’ll be easy to handle. Tiny silver/clear rocaille divide trianglecut amethyst glassbeads, small – ca 4 mm – peacock gray and larger top drilled apricot freshwater pearls. I was feeling crafty and so made the box and played with flowery stamps all over it. It’ll make a nice surprise spring present, I hope.

David is suitably admiring of my fiddling around with all things crafty, as any proper partner would be! Sometimes he likes to throw in some ideas himself, like the little bag most of the stuff from todays photo comes from. “I just wanted to see what you could make of these” he exclaimed, presenting me with an assortment of cloisonné beads and varying metal jewelery findings- sliders, fittings, spacers…

Thanks, darling.

So this is one thing you can use random components for. It’s strung on waxed silk, I tried with nylon but then the brass spacer kept hanging crooked. It was a bit tricky to get it to hang straight anyway, but by using the tiny holes between the ornament plate and the spacer holes rather than the spacer holes themselves I got it there.

There are a few knots and tangles hidden in and around the spaces and the round cloisonné bead to get the different parts to stay in place. To avoid having an extra ending somewhere in the middle of the necklace all three strings run all the way from the butterflies to the clasp at the neck, one on one side and two on the other from the round bead.

Today I also learned how difficult it is to photograph crystals.

Here are two Swarovski items; a pendant made of 8mm flowers and my first ever earrings with 8mm hearts.

I’ve had the flowers for quite some time but haven’t known what to do with them as they are drilled through the middle and will not hang in a very practical way on a piece of string. Here, they are on flat headed hat pins cut in different lengths that I’ve simply bent at the end.

The earrings are simply strung on thin black wire.

Time to update here, first time this year, and it’s already March!

This is a simple ball chain with a strass ring pendant. The left over of the chain is used in the pendant with a part of an old earing – the strass heart – a painted sweet water pearl, a few crystals and a beautiful Klimt’ic Tree of live pendant from Sirlig.

 

The beads and pendants are fastened to the ball chain with clamshells w/ hook. You’ll have to cut one of the hinges from the clamshell to fasten it over the ball. To keep the piece of chain from slipping through the strass ring it is tied with thin wire to the ring that holds the red glass heart.