turquoise – A Smith of All Trades

It had been four months since our last craft night, but last weekend my girlfriends and I finally got together again for some good food, yummy wine, fun crafting and much-needed girl time. We decided to keep it low-key and make jewelry. Since I have more beads than any one human being could possibly ever need or use, I happily hosted.

We made necklaces inspired by a Pinterest find; and although they took a while, they turned out great.

To make your own necklace you’ll need ribbon, two oversized jump rings, beads and eye pins. Simply string an individual bead onto an eye pin, then close the pin at the open end. Loop each new eye pin into the previous one, creating a chain as you go.

Once your chain is long enough, attach each end to an oversized jump rings. Do not connect your jump rings to one another.

If you want your necklace to have multiple chains, which I did, create and attach them to the existing jump rings as before. It helps to make each subsequent chain longer than the first so they hang nicely.

As a last step, add your ribbon. Loop both ends through the jump ring and back through itself on the other side (does that make any sense?).

Voila!

So pretty 🙂

In other news, if you can call it news, I am almost finished reading my Harry Potter books. I flew through the sixth book and am about 200 pages shy of the end of the seventh. They are seriously my favorite books ever and I am already planning on when I should reread the entire series again. The point is, as soon as I’m done reading this book, I’m free! I’ll actually stop being a book worm and do something crafty! Woo!

What do I have in the works?

Shutters for the house — purchased, but not installed
New lattice enclosure for our garbage cans because ours is hideous and falling apart
Ripping up the rocks along our driveway so I can lay weed barrier and make it look less atrocious (Thankfully, my dad already started on this for us.)
Maybe doing a weed treatment to our yard because it’s abhorrent… who knows about this though
I still want to make an ottoman for our family room, but I need pallets again

I don’t really know what to call this necklace I made this past weekend, so let’s call it a mesh-like pendant. All in all, it was a little tricky to make, but I think it is pretty and very unique, so here goes!

For this project you’ll need elongated beads (pearls are optional), eye pins (a loop on one side, a pin on the other), and some chain.

To begin, stack one of your beads and a pearl on an eye pin, and close the other end into a loop. Make a second eye pin in the same way and connect the two where the pearls meet. I suggest using a jump ring in the middle (not seen in the photo below because I realize this a few eye pins into the pendant).

Now, make an eye pin with one bead and no pearl — take this and connect it to the two green ends of the two eye pins that connect to the jump ring in the center.