All about jewellery making

I was surprised to realise how many of my necklaces are a short length when my preference is for longer styles. Just as with earrings I like dangly, jingly and arty! Feeling a bit short on inspiration I turned to my books on beading and based my flower bead lariat on a necklace featured in Stephanie Burnham’s book ‘100 Beaded Jewellery Designs’. I like to look through this book every now and then as it helps to get creativity flowing. I have had the acrylic bellflower beads for some time and not been inspired to use them but I think they look well here. What I like about lariats is their flexibility as you can choose how long or short to wear them. The seed beads are lilac-lined blue size 11/0s that I have for sale at Bead Tree.

It is that time of year when I begin to think about clothes and accessories for this coming autumn/winter.  I just love accessories whether it be jewellery, hats, bags, scarves or belts for their ability to transform or update an outfit.  They allow you to follow through with whatever particular vibe you are into at the time, to express your personality and to add some fun to your day.  I think I will be embracing this season’s upcoming ‘foho’ trend (Bohemian crossed with folk) as I have already been sewing woven braid onto jeans! Now what to make next….

Despite their strikingly complicated appearance beaded spiral ropes are in fact really quite easy to produce.  Not only do they offer the opportunity for experimenting with the most glorious colour schemes but they are very satisfying to make, especially since there is so much scope for variation by altering the sizes of the beads involved in the project.

For simplicity’s sake I am going to show you how to make the basic beaded spiral.  You can see from the examples of beaded spiral ropes that I have previously posted that alternative sizes of beads have indeed been used.

N.B.  Before you begin you need to make a brief assessment of your materials since the thread used will need to pass through the core beads more than once.  Sometimes, depending on the beads and the thickness of the thread used (I usually use Nymo), I pass the thread through each section of the spiral rope twice (meaning that the core beads contain three thicknesses of thread whilst the beads that ‘climb’ the rope only contain two) as this provides extra stability.  You need to judge what is best for your particular piece.

For the purposes of this tutorial I am going to use two colours of beads to make the process of adding beads to the spiral rope as clear as possible.  If this is your first attempt at a beaded spiral rope I suggest using size 8/0 seed beads as these are a reasonable size to handle and will comfortably take multiple strands of thread.

Step 1 - the ’stop’ bead
The purpose of the ’stop’ bead is to prevent beads sliding off the end of the thread.  Here’s how its done:

Step 2 - starting the beaded spiral rope
Add three colour A beads (beads 1, 2 & 3) to your thread.  These are your ‘core’ beads.  Please see diagram below.

Step 3 - adding the first set of ‘climbing’ beads
Now add one more colour A bead (4) and three colour B ‘climbing’ beads (5,6 & 7) like so:

Step 4 - beginning the beaded spiral
Now take your thread back up beads 1, 2, 3 and 4 (so that bead 4 now joins the rest of the core beads and 5, 6 and 7 ‘climb’ along the edge) as shown in the diagram below:

You have now completed the first row of the beaded spiral rope.

Step 5 - ‘cimbing the rope’

In order to continue ‘climbing’ the beaded rope you need to add the next set of ‘climbing’ beads.  This is done just as in step 3 and the additional beads are numbered 8, 9, 10 and 11 in my diagram.  Once you have threaded them on take your needle through bead 2 and draw the thread up core beads 3, 4 and 8 (Please see my diagram as this can get a bit confusing!  The technique is really simple when explained visually!)

So following the logic of the beaded spiral rope the next row will add beads 12, 13, 14 and 15.  The thread will be taken through core beads 3, 4, 5 and 12.  For each row you take the thread through the next three core beads numerically plus the first bead of the ‘climbing’ set you have just added.

Keep going until you have your desired length of beaded spiral rope!

Copyright 2008 http://www.allaboutjewellerymaking.info
Not to be reproduced on any other website, in printed format or on a portable media device. May be printed for personal use but must not be used for commercial purposes.

Inspired by a forthcoming Christmas concert I set about designing myself some really sparkly, super-dangly earrings.  To me, dangly earrings are the jewellery equivalent of the high heeled show providing an instant confidence boost and a bit of glamour.  Wishing to spread a little pre-Christmas cheer I will explain here how I made these glittery shoulder dusters.  It really isn’t as hard as it looks and this design is hugely versatile in terms of length, colour and the potential for added detail. 

I knew that I wanted to make my ‘Christmas party’ earrings in a Christmassy colour and had absolutely fallen inlove with some deep emerald faceted crystal rondelles that I had actually purchased as Bead Tree shop stock.  Nevertheless I couldn’t resist and gathered a handful of these scrumptious beads to set aside for my own use.  Also in my shop inverntory were some silver-lined apple green seed beads that not only complemented the rich emerald colour very well but offered a good dose of sparkle - fundmental to my vision of these showstopping, glimmering and twinkling, swishing and swaying earrings that I had in mind.

What follows here is a guide to their construction rather than a precise tutorial.  This is to allow you to be creative with your own version.  If you use my ‘Christmas party’ earrings tutorial and would like to send me a picture of your finished earrings I will be pleased to add it to this post.

Materials

0.6 mm wire (I have used silver-plated)
24 beads about 6mm in size (I have used my luscious green rondelles)
Small handful of size 8/0 seed beads (I used silver-lined transparent)
Small handful of size 11/0 seed beads (I used silver-lined apple green)
One pair of ear hooks
Round nosed pliers
Flat nosed pliers
Wire cutters

The first element of these earrings that I made were the individual dangles.  I made my own headpins by cutting from my wire and making a small loop with the round nosed pliers at the end to stop the beads from falling off.  (You could use ready-made headpins just as well if you can find some long enough).

Here is my schemata for the sparkly dangles but you can create any combination you like:

Make 2 of:  (11/0 - 8/0 - 6mm - 8/0 - 11/0) rep twice then add 6x 11/0

Make 2 of:  (11/0 - 8/0 - 6mm - 8/0 - 11/0) rep twice then add 12x 11/0

Make 1 of: (11/0 - 8/0 - 6mm - 8/0 - 11/0) rep twice then add 18x 11/0

Finish each dangle with a loop at the top.

To illustrate the construction of the top part of the earring I will draw some diagrams as I think it is easier to communicate the technique pictorially.

With a piece of 0.6 mm wire approx. 7 ins long use your round nose pliers to create a large loop as shown in diagram 1.  Then using your flat nose pliers bend both ends of the wire so that they are at 90 degrees as indicated above.  You should now have something that looks like this:

Before proceeding add your beaded dangles to the loop in order of your choice followed by a 6 mm bead that threads onto both ends of the wire.  You now need to make a wrap with the wires just above the bead (holding the loop you made in stage 1 with the flat nose pliers will make it easier):

Next trim the wire that you have used to wrap with before threading on the second 6 mm bead.  Finally make a wire-wrapped loop with the remaining piece of wire like so:

Make another earring in the same way, attach both to your ear hooks and you’re done!

Copyright 2007 http://www.allaboutjewellerymaking.info
Not to be reproduced on any other website, in printed format or on a portable media device. May be printed for personal use but must not be used for commercial purposes.

Just a quick ’show and tell’ and a teensy tutorial.  I am loving wearing these earrings at the moment.  They are very simple to make using a basic hoop finding.  Here’s how I made them:

Materials:
2x hoop earring findings (or make your own from wire)
1 pair ear hooks
0.2 mm wire
Small handful size 9/0 seed beads
Small handful size 11/0 seed beads
3 large drop beads
4 small drop beads

1.  Un-hook the wire hoop at the back of the pre-made hoop finding and thread on your chosen drop beads in the following order - 1 small, 1 large, 1 small, 1 large, 1 small, 1 large, 1 small.  For the moment forget about these beads, just let them hang on the hoop out of the way.

2.  Take some fine wire, approx. 0.2mm in diameter, and wind it a few times around the hoop at the top.  Once the wire is firmly attached thread on your first seed bead (I have used blue size 9/0).  Position this bead up against the hoop on the outer edge and wind the wire around the hoop a couple of times to secure it.  Now you are ready to thread on your first group of 3 smaller seed beads which will sit on the inner edge of the hoop (I have used pale grey size 11/0).  Here is a close up picture to give you the idea:

As you can see from the photograph I have repeated this process 3 times plus one blue size 9/0 seed bead before incorporating the drop beads into the design (the drop beads essentially replace the 3 seed bead unit that you have been adding).  Each drop bead is separated by a size 9/0 seed bead and the wire should be wound around the hoop a couple of times between each bead so that they are all secured in place.

3.  Very nearly there!  Continue until you have incorporated all 7 drop beads into the design and then resume wiring on seed beads just as you did at the beginning so that they match the first side.

4.  Attach ear hooks and you’re done!

Copyright 2006 http://www.allaboutjewellerymaking.info
Not to be reproduced on any other website, in printed format or on a portable media device. May be printed for personal use but must not be used for commercial purposes.

These right angle weave beaded earrings were made using a pattern by Marcia DeCoster available from the Beading Daily site.  They are called ‘Tesserae earrings’.  My pair is not exactly the same as those illustrated as I had to improvise a bit with the beads.  I did not have any size 15/0s so the centre of the shapes are without a border.  I tried with size 11/0s but they just bunched up unattractively. 

I used a pale pink seed bead for the back of my earring but they were a slightly different size to the pink-lined blue Tohos on the front.  This meant that joining the two right angle weave sections was not as easy as it might have been.  If possible I would definitely use the same make of beads to alleviate this problem.  The main right angle weave sections were woven using 0.10″ monofilament which gave a nice stiff fabric.  When it came to putting the two halves together I changed to nymo as it was no longer possible to push the monofilament through without a needle. 

Despite all the alterations and uneven bead sizes I am still fairly pleased with the result and wore them yesterday.