Profusion of Pearls
May 9, 2011 § 1 Comment
The lustre of pearls has always appealed to me but as beautiful as a string of pearls are, they are very formal. 
So when I saw this beautiful mix of coloured glass pearls in The Bead Pot in Canterbury, I couldn’t resist the urge to make a casual pearly necklace. I was inspired by a charm bracelet design which was on display in The Bead Pot.
Here I’ve used just over 100 different shades of pink glass pearl beads and silver-plated head pins. The first job was create a wire wrapped loop for each pearl bead. Juliet, owner of Spoilt Rotten Beads does a very good demonstration of how to make a wire wrapped loop on YouTube. For the smaller beads, I’ve kept the wire wrap tight and neat as in the video but for the larger beads or where I wanted longer stems to the beads, I made the wrap more open and relaxed.
Once this was done, I started on the jump-ring chain. I’ve put at least 3 pearl beads onto each jump-ring (more if they were smaller beads). By adding the next jump-ring last before closing it up, I’ve kept all the beads on the lower half of each jump-ring. I’ve also clustered the jump-rings of smaller beads around the larger ones. The nice thing about working with jump-rings is the you can always open up the ring to move the beads around to create the right balance.
And so here is my completed pearly necklace. This one didn’t cost very much, £3.50 for a bag of mixed sizes and colours from The Bead Pot and £2 for the 100 silver plate head-pins. It was time-consuming having to create a wire loop for each bead but a great way to practise my wire work and it has provided great satisfaction. I’m tempted to make this design again but with real pearls? Maybe.
[...] it look easy and it is after a bit of practice. I had lots of practice making these loops for my Profusion of Pearls necklace. You can make the loops tight and neat as Juliet demonstrates or go for a more casual layering wire [...]