For some reason, this DIY brings me back to my elementary school days of stringing macaroni together on a thread to make funky bead necklaces. But then again, a lot of the fashion right now brings me full circle back to my childhood– yet it all looks a lot cooler now than before. Or maybe I just didn’t realize how cool I was back in the day.
Whatever it is, thanks to ddlai over at Fatlace’s Ladylike, you can learn how to make this geometric bead necklace to wear with all your other “so-hot-right-now” body chain gear.
What you’ll need:
- tube- or rod- like beads
- eyepins (these if you’re not sure and you’ll see later)
- chain of your chosen thickness
- jumprings
- round nose pliers preferred, but I used regular small tip pliers
- wire snippers
Firstly, you’ll want to do some sort of sketch of your pattern/shape. Try not to have too many off/side shapes that may end up just flapping about. Now ladies, you’ll also want to take note of your bewbs. If you’re one of the more well-endowed females, you’ll want to make sure that your pattern isn’t too wide or cross-body-like or else it might hang weird over your ladylumps. Designing a pattern that is longer/not as wide that will hang down the center of your chest may be preferable.
Drawing out your pattern before you start working is also good because you’ll have to count how many “rods” you’ll need to make. I ended up making 26 rods.
Secondly, these are the beads I ended up using. Originally I wanted just one long long bead per rod but they didn’t have any that I liked so I ended up tripling up. I really liked these beads I found because of the rustic/acid quality, but unfortunately they’re just plastic.
These are the eyepin things I was talking about. They’re really easy to find in any jewelry making store and they’re flaming cheap. I ended up having to snip the tips off because they were too long. String on your desired amount of beads so that you can measure how much you’ll need to snip off, or not. It’s always better to get eyepins that are super long that you can trim, than kicking yourself for getting shorties.
Next, start stringing on your beads.
Once you’ve strung the beads on, you’ll want to use your round-nose pliers (or regular ones) to fix the end of the open eyepin into a loop. On the right end of my rods in the pic, you’ll notice how retarded my loops are because I didn’t have any round-nose pliers available. Just make sure that your ends are really closed properly so that your beads don’t fall off, and also make sure the loops are big enough to fit your jump ring through later.
All 26 of my finished rods.
Next, using the jump rings, loop together two or more rods.
Using more jump rings, create the triangles (or squares or whatevz) that will make up your pattern. You’ll probably end up having 2 or more rods per jump ring, so make sure you refer to your sketch to see how many rods per joint there are. This is also good so that you don’t have to keep opening and closing a jump ring, which of course wears it down and makes it easier to break. The most I had on one jump ring was 6 rods so also make sure that your jump rings are big enough to fit them all on.
And now the final product! There are endless possibilities in terms of the patterns/shapes. I was even thinking about going completely insane and creating a vest/harness/body-chain/jousting armour.
Tags: DIY, Fatlace Ladylike, jewelry
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