Monday, 19 August 2013

August project part 1 - lariat necklace

This project has been troublesome to me. Not because of any real technical difficulties but because I didn't really like the materials that came with it and I struggled to come up with something I would actually wear!


This is what arrived. A nice case with some round nosed and flat pliers, some side cutters a snipper thing (will come in handy) a good pair of jewellery tweezers, a metal bead scoop and some little bead boxes that fit together quite cleverly.

I got a number of head pins, jump rings, stretchy wire, cord, ear hoops and an assortment of beads. The task is to make a lariat necklace with matching bracelet and earrings.

This i could do, I have done this before at college but I didn't like the beads, not at first anyway, now i appreciate the colour mix a little better, but my first thought was YUCK!

A lariat necklace one that is just a long piece of cord or chain with embellishment either end.  You fold over or twist the ends together to make a long necklace.

I tried lots of different bead combinations and making little links with the head pins but it felt like there was somethiing missing from it. I tried adding some old keys, that looked daft, so I eventually added a couple of these little birds  to add extra interest.

I struggled with the positioning of the different jump rings to hold on the head pins but as they are just knotted on it was fairly easy to adjust. I though the head pins provided were very difficult to shape and too hard for the cutters provided, I had to really give it some welly, so I am not happy with the quality of the loops in the pins. I have done much better in the past, in fact I might post a pic of a similar piece for a long time ago to show you at some point.

*update here are some pictures of the finished article.




Next thing to do now is the bracelet and earrings...

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