Hello. Welcome to another jewelry making video brought to you by KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today, we'll be making a necklace with the illusion of the beads floating along the strands.
It's easier than you might think. The key to making this necklace work is the
type of beading wire that you choose. This is bead stringing wire but it's colored.
Most bead stringing wire isn't intended to be seen so it's just a steel gray color but
this has a color. You can get it in many different colors; I have gold to go with what I'm doing.
You want to be sure to get something that is 19 strands or higher. There's 7 strand,
49 strand is even better but they didn't have it in the color I wanted. That is how many
strands are actually in this little wire. And the more there are, the more graceful
and flexible your wire will be. So, you'll need your wire. You'll need beads
and I have today 6mm Swarovski crystal bicones in the color Indian Pink. You'll need some
crimping beads, little 2mm crimps and some crimp covers which is what gives us the illusion
and I'll tell you more about those. You'll need a 4-inch piece of chain, a clasp,
3 jump rings, some bead cones and I'll show you how to use those later and just a little
bit of 22 gauge wire, craft wire is fine. You'll also need wire cutters, chain nose
pliers and round nose pliers. The first thing we're going to do is cut 3
lengths of this wire. Now, you can make your necklace any length you want but I kind of
like mine long. I'm going to cut a 28-inch, a 25-inch and a 23.5-inch piece of wire that
will give me a triple strand necklace. And with the 4-inch length, that will give me a nice
long necklace that can be adjusted. Before you start stringing your beads on your
wire, you need to first do a little bit of designing. These beads come in a package of
15 so I'm going to make that work by putting 6 beads on the longest strand, 5 on the middle
and 4 beads on the shortest. That's where one of these bead designing boards comes in
very handy because we've got three channels here and I'm just going to lay out my beads.
I know that my first strand is about 24-inches long, once it's finished.
It looks sparse at the moment but it'll be filled in. So, there are 6 on the outer one (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
and that leaves 4, although one seems to have escaped. I'll find it later.
Just to give you an idea of your spacing, I'm going to take my longest piece of wire
and start with that. I'm going to take one of the crimps and just put it on the wire,
right about the middle of the wire because this bead is right near the middle. And we
can adjust them more precisely in a bit. All you need to do is take your chain nose
pliers and squash that crimp flat. How's that for easy?
Now then, we need to use these crimp covers and the idea is that a flattened crimp is
not a design element as a rule, it really isn't. So, what these are, see if you can
see them, they look like donuts with a hole cut out of them. The idea is that you put
it over the crimp and then squeeze it closed and it just looks like a bead. That's how
we get the illusion of floating. These are smooth sided. And I've found in
testing, they gave me fits actually, they would slip out of my chain nose pliers.
So, I have my nylon jaw pliers here. You could also make do by wrapping some tape around
the jaws of pliers if your crimps slide out because you want to hold this just tight enough
to hold it. You don't want to squeeze it closed until you get the crimp into it, but you don't
want it going anywhere. So, these are kind of working perfectly.
And then, I'm just going to slide the crimp right into that bead and gently squeeze closed.
That's all there is to it. You can take a little time and kind of make it round and
that's that. Then, I'm going to slide on my crystal and add another crimp and another
crimp cover. Here it is with the crystal surrounded by
2 beads that are actually covering up crimps. I should mention that when you put the second
crimp on; give the crystal a little bit of room because the bead that covers the crimp
is necessarily a little wider. So, just give it a little space.
Then the next step is to slide on another crimp (and it goes zinging away.) Slide on another
crimp and now put your crystal on your design board where you wanted it to fall. And then,
slide your crimp up right next to the next bead. Hold it in place there and flatten with
your chain nose pliers. Repeat the procedure all the way around for
all 3 strands. I have finished stringing my beads, the crimps
and putting the crimp covers on the wire. The next thing I did was I took the 3 strands
and I brought them to a mirror, held them up in front of myself in a mirror to determine
the length. I ended up making them just a little bit closer
in length than they would have been according to this board. But go ahead and judge it for
yourself and when you have them positioned the way you like, take some tape, some
scotch tape or masking tape and tape the ends together making sure to leave at least an
inch and a half, a couple inches sticking out of each end.
Now, it's time to simply do the finishing. What we're going to do is slide on a crimp
bead on each wire and you'll see why we have them taped together in a moment, then slide
the wire back through the crimp. Slide the crimp up the loop that you have, the loop
of wire until you have around an 1/8-inch, just a small loop. Then just go ahead and
take chain nose pliers and flatten that crimp. Put one on the nose pieces of your chain nose
in there and just tug, make sure that's secure. Once you're sure it's secure, just use wire
cutters to trim off that excess piece. Repeat for all 6 of your wire ends, making each set
of 3 the same length. Then you can remove the tape.
You can see I have gone ahead and made loops with crimps on all 6 ends of my wire.
A couple of tips: Remember to start with the shortest length of wire in each group of 3
so that you can get them all the same length. Be sure to check the strength of your crimp
by tugging on that loop before you cut off the excess wire.
Now, it's time to put all this together into a necklace and this is where we're going to
need our craft wire. You're going to need about a 3-inch piece.
Since this isn't precious metal wire, don't stress about getting an exact amount. We're
just going to do a bend round about the middle. Maybe a little higher up, maybe like an
inch and a half from one end, an inch and a quarter, whatever, really it's not crucial.
But we're going to start with a 90-degree bend then tuck in your round nose pliers,
about halfway up the pliers so that you have a larger loop than you might normally make.
Wrap as far as you can around the pliers then reposition and finish so that you have a loop
with a wire sticking out at 90-degree angles to each other. Go ahead and just twist that
open a little. Then you're going to slide on 3 of your loops
from one end of the necklace. What we're doing is we're enclosing these in
a wrapped loop. Hold that loop with chain nose pliers and then use another pair of chain
nose pliers to wrap that wire around the longer piece of wire. This is never going to be seen,
so a good time to practice making nice wrapped loops but if it comes out wonky, don't worry
about it. Now, those wires are secured and we can just
cut of the excess and unlike most of the time when the wraps are exposed, we don't have
to worry about tucking that sharp end because what we're going to do is slide on a bead
cone and see that it nicely covers everything. This one, it's got kind of a wide hole at
the top so I decided to add a bead up here. It will just keep the wire from flopping around
inside that hole, and keep it all nice and firm. Then we're just going to make a wrapped
loop that will be visible right above that bead. Grab right above the bead with chain
nose pliers, bend it at 90-degree angle. Start your wrapped loop, it doesn't have to
be a big one this time. Finish your loop. Twist to open and slide on one end of your
length of chain. Then go ahead and close that loop. Hold it with chain nose pliers then
use your other pliers to do the wraps, right up to that bead.
Trim off the excess. Here you do want to feel, that end is sharp end so I'm going to take
the chain nose and just tuck in that end. And now you can repeat to add a cone to the other
end of the necklace. You won't be adding a piece of chain, you can just add on a jump
ring. So I've gone ahead and added both ends, sets of ends of the wires to bead caps.
The last step is just to add your lobster clasp with a jump ring. There you have it,
an illusion necklace. Here's another look at the necklace we made
today. I hope that you've enjoyed this project and that you'll give it a try, consider using
any kind of bead that you like, any colors of wire, any different kinds of crimp covers.
You can just make it entirely your own. Thank you so much for watching Keepsake Crafts'
videos. Please be sure to click on the Subscribe button so you don't miss a thing and also
check out my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net, where I have lots more sewing and crafting ideas
and inspiration. Happy creating and thanks again for watching.