Dupioni Silk Necklace- tutorial

This year I have been enjoying making some handmade gifts for my friends and family. Something about working with your hands to create something for someone you love makes you feel good inside :)

This necklace is based off of a version I saw on-line. The original was a coral color and used large rondelles as the spacers. For this necklace I used black Dupioni Silk and wire wrapped it with hematite seed beads and wire. I didn't have a whole lot of progressive pictures of this project, but I tried to explain it the best I could. If you have any questions... just contact me. I'd be happy to help you out.

A little unknown fact about me is that I dabbled in jewelry way before I ever scrapbooked. I use to love jewelry making... the only problem was that I never could do it just perfect as in magazines and such. Earlier this month I took a class with Jen Cushman and her attitude towards jewelry making is to create "organic" pieces. Since I am "organic" in my art... this just made sense for me. It truly felt like I could liberate myself from the perfectness of what I used to do in jewelry making and now attempt it in my own fashion. If you ever have a chance to take one of Jen's classes. Do it. She is phenomenal in the way she teaches as well as very well educated in jewelry and mixed media.

This was just one long piece of black Dupioni Silk that I used to wrap wooden beads. Before finishing off each wooden bead with silk, I used wire to stabilize the middle of the wooden bead and used the excess of the wire to wrap around the base of the bead to enclose it in the silk. This is actually quite simple, once you get the hang of it. The wire I used was what I had on hand which was 24 gauge (that is what the packaging said... but it felt more like 20 gauge) in a silver finish. For the beading I took a long piece of thin wire and strung beads through it. From here I simple haphazardly wrapped it around the beads and the wire wrappings in between each beads.

To finish off each end I wire wrapped each end and trimmed the silk to fit in a silver cone bead. I made sure to loop some wire through and formed each loop and hammered it. For the closure, I tied some silk to the loop and sewed it close with a zig zag stitch.

It truly is a simple project if you just let your self play, make mistakes and find out what works for you. The only way you can learn is to make mistakes and learn from there what you like and don't like. Sometimes you may just fall in love with the unexpected and make that your new style :)

Products used: Black Dupioni Silk, Black Thread (From Joann's Fabric), Wire (From Hobby Lobby) Beads-Unknown.

Thanks for visiting today... I hope this helps you with your holiday gift giving :) If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via email or facebook :)

~Liz ♥