Showing posts with label Necklace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Necklace. Show all posts

Saturday, August 4, 2012

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).


Wednesday, February 8, 2012

DIY Steampunk Gears Necklace




I have always been obsessed with watches, clocks, and gears, so when "steampunk" jewelry started to come into style, I was enthralled.

I had found a small package of these thin gear shaped metal pieces at Michael's and just had to have them. They sat in one of my craft supplies boxes for a few months while I thought long and hard about what to do with them. I bought some actual watch gears as well and added them to my box. A long time friend, Jolee, and I, had a craft night a couple months ago and came up with the idea to make necklace pendants using the gears. This necklace was the result:


This necklace is not difficult to make. Expensive? Well, kinda. I suppose that if you want to make a really cool one of a kind necklace, the price of materials might be worth it. If you want to make a bunch of these babies, it's also worth buying the materials.

Materials:

- Thin metal gear pieces (the ones in the photo range from about 1/3 inch to 1 inch. Unfortunately, I could not find a photo of these on Michael's website but I got them in the jewelry making section of Michael's). Here's an auction on EBAY of something that would work but if you want to keep this project cheap, find them at Michael's.


- Chain (between 14 and 24 inches depending on how long you want the necklace to be. See steps below for general guide on necklace lengths).





- Toothpick or other pointed object to apply and remove excess glue




Directions:

Step 1: Lay out your large gears in a formation that you like on a large piece of paper. Play around with the formation until you are happy with it. The gears need to be overlapping each other in a way that offers enough surface area to apply glue.


Step 2: Apply a small amount of E6000 to the end of a toothpick or other pointy object. Use toothpick to evenly spread glue on back of one gear and overlap on top of another gear. Press down and continue with all other gears until your formation has been completely glued together. Glue small gears on top of main formation. I tried to add these pieces to places that had too much glue bubbling out. Wait for about an hour to dry.



Step 3: While waiting, prepare chain by using side cutters to cut two equal length pieces that will be secured to either side of your pendant. A 14 inch chain (two 7 inch pieces) will yield an extremely short necklace but you have to add in the size of the pendant. If the pendant is 2 inches wide, you'll end up with a 16 inch necklace which is a pretty standard length. It should fall at the collar bone. If you want something longer, do a 16 inch chain (8 inches on each side). With the addition of a 2 inch pendant to the length, you'll end up with a standard 18 inch necklace. Please see the photo below for more lengths.

Step 4: Attach clasp to end of chain by opening jump ring with chain nose pliers, adding clasp and end of chain onto the jump ring. Close using pliers by squeezing it shut. Make sure the jump ring is fully closed. I swear half of the jewelry I fix is due to jump rings being slightly open. Repeat steps with other part of clasp and other half of chain.

If you have two sets of pliers,

Step 5: After gears are completely dry, remove from paper. Pull any excess paper off back carefully so that no paper can be seen from the front.

Step 6: Open 2 jump rings and find holes on either side of the pendant to put them through. Add one side of chain to each jump ring and close using pliers. Wait 24 hours before wearing to ensure glue is completely dry. Enjoy! Oh! And watch out for sharp parts that might protrude out of the small gears. You can clip off any sharp pointy parts with your side clippers. Don't say I didn't warn you!


Here's another one I made:


Check out my other DIY tutorials: