DIY 3 Toned Key Necklace

Well, life has been crazy busy. My poor Olympus DSLR bit the dust last month. I replaced it with a Canon T3 which has been amazingly awesome. At the end of July, we moved to a new apartment.

I may be doing a post on cute decorating ideas I find around the internet since I'm going to be putting some time and energy into decorating our new place.

Like it but don't wanna make it?? Buy it HERE. (Please message me through Etsy if the item is sold out and you would like one).

As for now, a tutorial on how to make this necklace:

Materials:

- Three key pendants in different metal tones
- Four to five jump rings
- A small metal ring
- Approximately 20 to 26 inches of chain (depending on your preferred length)
- A clasp set
- A pair of chain nose pliers (two sets of pliers if possible but one will work too)

Here are the keys I found. They came in a package at 

Michael's like the one shown below.

I used about 20 inches of chain for my necklace. 

It was a medium thick chain:

Directions:

Step One: Open a jump ring using pliers. If you have two sets of pliers, look here. If you only have one, put the tip of the pliers into the center of the ring and open carefully. You only want to open them enough to allow the key and the metal ring to slip on to it. 

Step Two: close jump ring around key and metal ring. If you have one set of pliers, just push the ring back together so the gap closes. If you have two pliers, refer to the link above.

Step Three: Repeat with all other keys until all three are on the metal ring.

Step Four: Find the middle point in the chain and lay the chain out so that there is equal length on both sides and the middle forms a U. Pull middle through metal ring:

Step Five: Take the loose ends of the chain and pull them through the U. Make sure you pull them through so that there is still equal length on both sides. No lop sided necklaces! =)

It should look something like this:

Step Six: Attach Clasp. How you do this will depend on the clasp you choose. I had to use a jump ring to secure half of it. The actual clasp itself had a sort of built in jump ring that worked great. See below how I did mine:

Opened with pliers:

And shut with pliers:

The other part of the clasp, I attached with a jump ring. Just use instructions above on how to open and close jump rings to do that part.

And here it is with a clasp attached to it:

Okay, now go out wearing it and gather some compliments. Nothing feels better than people asking you where you got your necklace than when you can answer "I made it!"

I also made this one with slightly larger keys and a longer chain:

 Like it but don't wanna make it?? Buy it HERE. (Please message me through Etsy if the item is sold out and you would like one).

DIY Tutorial: Chandelier Crystal Earrings

Love them but don't want to make them? Click here to buy them at my Etsy shop.

I have A LOT of jewelry supplies lying around. Since I am trying to save money, I'm going to go ahead and use the things I already have to do tutorials with. Jewelry tutorials are the easiest for me to make since I have been making jewelry for almost 10 years now. Plus, it's pretty AND you get to wear it while having the satisfaction of knowing you made it yourself (which is especially awesome when you get compliments on it!).

I wanted to do a pair of chandeliers for this post for a few reasons. The first is that it is not much more difficult than some of the other earrings I have done tutorials for on this site. (Check out: Christmas Tree Earrings to see what I mean). It's essentially the same thing really. It just takes longer and you have to repeat steps multiple times.

I chose to do my earrings with Swarovski crystal. Swarovski beads are pretty expensive though, so if you don't already have some on hand, you can use pretty much any bead as long as they will fit nicely in the frames you choose. You can also pick any frames you like. There are usually a few different types at craft stores.

Materials:

- A pair of chain nose pliers

- A pair of round nose pliers

- A pair of cutters

- 2 Chandelier frames

- Headpins (one for each loop on your chandelier frames)

- Beads (I used 4mm, 5mm, and 6mm Swarovski crystal but you can choose whatever you want as long as they are small enough to fit in the frames).

- 2 Earring wires

Directions:

Step 1: Place beads you want for the center of your chandelier on an headpin. Grab the end of the head pin (the end with no head) and bend it at the top of the beads. Be careful not to do it too aggressively, or the top crystal may crack. You will want to make sure that there is room for the headpin and the beads in the middle of your chandelier. If the headpin is too long, or the beads are too large, the piece will not dangle correctly.

Step 2: Next, take the round nose pliers and grab the head pin at the top of the beads. Make sure it is as close to the beads as possible without actually touching the top bead. Grab the end of the head pin and bend it around the looping pliers, pulling to make a round shape with the wire.

Step 3: Next, cut off the excess wire leaving some room to complete the rest of the loop.

Step 4: Finally, use the chain nose pliers to bend the wire into a complete loop. I find it easiest to push up at the same time as bending to make a nice even loop. This step can be difficult if you've never made jewelry before, so you may want to practice on some empty head pins before trying it. Okay, so now push the loop closed. This piece is finished.

Step 5: Repeat this process with all other dangling pieces. How many beads you put on which loop in the chandelier frames is entirely up to you. I decided to keep it simple and put two larger beads for the middle piece and one small bead on each bottom loop (see photos). You can be creative and put as many as you'd like for each loop. Just make sure they will dangle correctly and not get stuck when they hang. Attach pieces as you make them by opening the loop you made on the headpins and closing them around the loops on the chandelier frames using a pair of chain nose pliers.

Step 6: Once all your pieces are on the frames, open the earring wires and slip the frames onto them. Close them with the chain nose pliers.

You're done!

Love them but don't want to make them? Click here to buy them at my Etsy shop.

DIY Themed Earrings

Okay. So this is super easy and you can make some really neat earrings with this idea.

Generally, you find the main material for this project in the scrap-booking section although it could be anywhere there are buttons. These earrings are made from specialty buttons which are so freaking cute, I just had to find something to do with them! I made the cupcake earrings for to wear to birthday parties and other celebrations. I made the clovers because St. Patty's Day is quickly approaching and because they were sparkly ;)

Materials:

- Plastic specialty buttons, can have flat backs or plastic button loop (usually found in scrap-booking section at craft stores)

- A pair of nippers (if you pick buttons with loop on back. If you pick ones that have flat backs, you don't need nippers)

- E6000 glue

- Earring posts with flat metal piece for gluing

Directions:

Step 1: If you bought buttons with loops on the back, you will need to cut them off using nippers. Get the nippers as close to the back of the button as possible and squeeze hard. You want the back to be as flat as possible so the earring post will glue on nicely. If the buttons are more than one piece held together by backing, they may fall apart. It's okay- just glue the pieces back together and wait about 10 minutes before moving to step 2.

Step 2: Put glue on back of earring post and glue to back of button. Think about where you glue the post and how the earring will look on your ear depending on where you put it.

Step 3: Wait for glue to dry for about an hour and then try them on. It's that easy!