Pendant Making

Life this week has been crazy, and crazier.  Fortunately I have a great family and friends to help me through and finally have some time to write about the second part of the beading project.  Making a pendant.  This is a great trick to have in your jewelry making arsenal because there are so many ways to use pendants.  You can hang them from a chain (my personal favorite), add them to your beaded necklace, create little charms for a braclet, make a keychain for your mom, or just about anything your creative brain can think up.  As I wrote about last time, I recently visited my brother and very talented sister-in-law.  (Little brother you are very talented too (: )  I photographed Amy as she made a pendant for Melissa, my other sister-in-law's, pink necklace.  In later writing I'll show you more of the jewelry I've made but today I'm showcasing my sister-in-laws' (plural) talents.  Just cause I love them and they're awesome like that. 




Supplies:
-2 Needle Nose Pliers
 (Can use a Flat Nose Pliers
 for your second pliers)
-Beads
-Length of wire or a
 head pin or eye pin


Depending on the size of your pendant you can either purchase eye or head pins or make your own.  Here Amy makes an eye pin.  Eye pins have a loop at the bottom and head pins have a flat head and lay flush with the bottom of your pendant.  Many times you can buy a kit of findings that have eye/head pins, clasps, jump rings, etc already in them.  This can make things easier than buying a bunch of different pieces.  Start with a length of wire about 4" long or longer depending on the size of your pendant.  Using your needle nose pliers create a small loop at the end of the wire (see image).

Add your beads!!

The next part is kind of tricky and might take a couple tries till you get it right.  I'll try my best to explain it and use the images if you have trouble understanding my explaination.  About 1/2" above your top bead use your needle nose pliers to create a loop.  It'll be similar to the one on the bottom but you'll have a long tail (see image below).

Using your fingers you'll take the wire tail and wrap it around the wire underneath the loop.   When it gets too hard to wrap it with your fingers use a second pair of pliers to help guide it around. Continue wrapping the wire until you run out of wire or you get to the top of the bead.   If you still have wire left when you get to the top of your bead snip off the excess with a wire snippers.  Make sure the end of the wire is wrapped securely so it doesn't poke you when you're wearing your pendant. 

 

This is the finished pendant.  I've made several pendants but mine never look this nice up-close.

I photographed a couple of Amy's finished pieces with pendants to show you her awesome work and give you some inspiration.  Amy's working on a blog of her own so check her work out at www.tangentcolors.blogspot.com

My niece and nephew show me the beading they were working on.  I wish I still had the imagination of a child.  You never thought too seriously about what you were creating you would just create.