All about jewellery making

This button necklace was very simple to make.  I found a good range of blue buttons lurking in my sewing box and decided to use their varying shades as a feature of my necklace.  Each button is connected to the next using jump rings that I made by wrapping wire around different size knitting needles (if you don’t know how to do this see my tutorial on making jump rings here).  For a bit of contrast I followed the pale blue buttons with white, finishing the necklace with a flower button.  The necklace is one long length, I wrapped it around my jewellery display bust to get a good photograph.

The focal is made from two buttons and wire.  It is really easy to do.  The central button has a shank at the back so I threaded my wire through one of the holes in the base button, up through the shank of the top button and down through the second hole of the base button again.  Then I pushed the remaining wire flush with the back of the base button so that I could make a wrapped loop at both the top and the bottom.  The top loop was used to connect the button focal to the main necklace and the loop at the bottom for a decorative bead dangle.

I found buttons lots of fun to work with and of course they are a recycled material too.  This encourages creativity as you have to work with what you have got.  I think the overall effect is quite retro and bohemian!

I have just finished making this set of Christmas jewellery for myself to wear over the festive period.  The pattern is from the latest Bead and Button magazine on p.48 and is called ‘Crystal Showers’.  I made the earrings by completing just one unit of the design before attaching them to the ear hooks.  The technique is right angle weave and is quite easy once you get the hang of the pattern.
 
You can probably see from the picture that the crystals I used are rather uneven.  These are some I am using up as they were to be stock for my shop but I do not consider them good enough quality to sell.

I chose red and gold as my colour scheme as I think these are especially Christmassy colours and will add a bit of glitter to my outfit.

It is unlikely that I will get another opportunity to post here before Christmas so I hope you all have a fabulous holiday and a joyful new year.

There is a story to this pendant that I completed today.  It started life as one half of a pair of earrings!  I had spent quite some time making them but when I tried them on they looked far too big, I totally misjudged the size of the core frame.  However I did like the design so decided to keep one and convert it to a pendant.  I have not yet decided what type of necklace to put it on, I am thinking something plain so as not to distract the eye away from the wirework. 

The central stone is a faceted pineapple quartz bead.  You may notice that the crystals around the perimeter of the frame are not particularly even in size.  I did in fact order a range of colours for my shop, Bead Tree, but was so unhappy with the quality that I decided to use them up myself instead.  I used my jig to create the initial shape of the frame which is constructed using 18 gauge silver plated wire.  The wirewrapping has been done using 28 gauge wire. 

I like making this type of jewellery because it allows you to be very creative in the construction of the piece.  Quite hard work on the hands though!

I have called this my ‘mossy glade’ pendant and it is Eni Oken inspired.  The stone is chrysocolla and this particular example has many beautiful shades of green within it. I built the assymetric design on the left shoulder of the pendant to hide the fact that the stone itself had not been cut straight across the top.  Due to this flaw I had been wondering what to do with it for a while.

The wire is silver-plated (24 and 26 gauge) and the ornamentation on the surface includes a small Swarovski butterfly, peridot chips and silver beads.  A basketweave effect has been used to create the bail.  Since taking this picture I have hung the pendant on a simple wire necklace that I coiled to match the framework of the finished pendant.  I thought the presentation should remain simple to draw the eye to the gemstone and wirework.

I made this pendant last night using a pattern from ‘Crystal Beaded Jewellery’ by Christine and Sylvie Hooghe (Search Press ISBN 1-84448-106-9).  The pattern is called ‘graphic star’ and my example turned out quite differently because I used different beads than those recommended. 

Although the book is based on using crystals in jewellery I find it interesting to make up the designs with other types of bead.  Here I have used 8mm blue goldstone, small oval cracked crystal beads and size 11/0 gold seed beads.  Using these patterns without crystals makes the effect a little less ‘bling’.  Of course it depends on what final result you are looking for.  I have to confess that this pendant was made with some oddments I found whilst sorting through my bead boxes.  I used monofilament to thread the beads as it is almost invisible when the piece is finished.

I do like this book very much and it is one of the few jewellery making books I own -  I only tend to buy what I consider the best books otherwise I borrow them from the library.  The beaded bead that I used for the clasp on my daisy bead bracelet was a pattern from this book.

Here is the Amazon link for this book: