Filigree necklace tutorial - beading for beginners

With Christmas just around the corner, I am always on the lookout for simple (and cheap) but beautiful handmade gift ideas. At my2angels I saw some very pretty filigrees, have a look at them here! I took a few home to make into necklaces. The best thing is, they are so pretty by themselves, all the hard work is done and I just have to put them together.

For a real quick present I could simply attach a jump ring to a filigree flower and string it on a ribbon and it's done, but we can do better than that!

If you have never tried your hand at beading, this is the tutorial for you! It's not hard, seriously. You just need a few basic tools, available at my2angels:

 round nose pliers ($1.50)

wire cutting pliers ($1.99)

Pick a filigree flower, like this one from a set of 6 mixed styles and open up a small jumpring with the pliers:

Slide the open jumpring through the flower and a filigree cross and close it with the pliers:

(Excuse the dirty fingers, I had just finished some gardening)

Repeat that on the other side, so you have 2 crosses attached to the flower:

Now slide another jumpring through the opposite hole of the cross and close it around the first link of a chain. Always bend the jumpring, not the chain links.

Repeat on the other side:

Measure how long you want your chain to be and cut through a chain link with the wire cutting pliers. Attach a small jumpring and a parrot clasp on one side and a larger jumpring on the other side:

Now a tassel! String a brown pearl on  a head pin. They have a little stopper at the end so your bead won't fall off. If the bead's hole is too big and it falls off, add a bead cap. (I didn't have a antique bronze head pin, but the silver will do.) Cut it about 1cm above the bead with the wire cutting pliers (don't use your scissors, they will get wrecked!)

With the nose of the round nose pliers bend the wire till it looks like a hook...

... link it around a chain link...

...and close it with the pliers:

Do that 3 times, add a large jump ring and your tassel is complete! 

Attach it to the flower and your beautiful necklace is done.

For a finishing touch I put a few drops of dark chocolate Liquid Pearls in the middle...

...and glued 2 brown pearls on the crosses:

You can of course go all out with the bling and the colours, but I wanted something soft and tone-in-tone with the bronze.

And here I am with a beautiful new necklace:

Now that you have mastered the basics you can make all kinds of wonderful things. In fact, I rarely buy fashion jewelry, most of my stuff is handmade.

I got a little adventurous and decided to make something fancy. I picked a few different filigrees and arranged them in a triangle. Then I attached them all with small jump rings. I made sure I closed them all real well with a bit of an overlap, so they wouldn't come apart.

Find the ones I used here:

filigree flower mix

filigree crosses

round floral flower filigrees

flower filigrees

flat circle filigrees

I added a chain, just like the first necklace, and a leaf charm:

And here we have it:

It was getting dark, so I stopped here, but if you like you can glue rhinestones, pearls or a resin flower in the centre of each circle. I decided to keep mine plain.

Once you get started the ideas keep flowing. I hope this has give you some inspiration for Christmas gifts.

Cheers, Geli

Let your imagination soar

Do you find boys hard to scrap? Have you ever been for a ride in a hot air balloon? I've got the perfect page for you:

Come along to my class at Kaisercraft Robina on Monday, Oct 29, and we'll make something cool. 

How about mini balloons and a little stitching:

You can choose your own colours and papers.

Dare to skate

 This is my home class next week:

 In September my kids got their first taste of ice skating when they were invited to our friend's birthday party. It was awesome to watch them go from clutching the walls in fear of their lives to carefully scooting along a few millimeters at the time to skating in the middle of the ring with a big smile on their faces. All in a matter of 3 hours. 

And because it's Halloween next week, the page needed a skull... 

 Not a fan of Halloween? You can make something else :)

Finish it off with some droplets and the ever-bouncy micro beads:

Make this page any theme you like, boyish, girly, Christmas... it suits most everything!

Captain Red- introducing our new cat

One Thursday evening a ginger tomcat moved in. No, we didn't find him, he found us, made himself at home and adopted us as his new family. He's ours now (we checked, he didn't have an owner) and we call him 

Captain Red. 

 We will do this page in class next week. I scraplifted my own layout I had in Scrapbooking Memories early this year, but this time we will do a different version of a felt flower with a bottle cap. One with a twist, so to speak. 

 Would you like to learn how to make ruffled ribbon like this? I'll show you in class.

Geli

Miss you

This is my next week's class project. Come along if you like. It's pretty and soft.

photo by Ulrike Schmitt-Hartmann

Lots of flowers...

 The papers are from the wonderful Prima Songbird collection. I used Lineage, Mosaic and Zephyr, and a with some pearlized Mica fragments and a key charm. You can find lots of similar styles here at my2angels, also the baker's twine and the Liquid Pearls that I used.

How to print on calico - Winnetou and Old Shatterhand are back!

Another UFO is no longer an unfinished object. I recently did the "Stop and smell the roses" class:

(the original layout)

I knew I wanted to do a cowboy & Indian version of this page:

(my cowbow version)

If you grew up in Germany and you didn't spend the last 50 years under a rock, you know who these fellows are. Winnetou and Old Shatterhand by Karl May are absolute cult figures of the Wild West and if you don't know them, you have truly missed out on something awesome. As kids we used to watch the movies many times and play cowboys and Indians for hours.

My cowboy version still has the feathers... 

 ...but these cool charms from my2angels were just what the doctor ordered to give it some Wild West charm. Here's a cowboy hat and lantern... 

...and a gun:

 Of course I have no photos of our childhood games, so I found a photo of the movie heroes online. I knew the photo needed something to give it the Wild West look and I decided to print it on calico:

 Now, I didn't re-invent the wheel, I'm sure someone has shown how to do this before, but this is quick and easy and looks oh-so-cool!

Step 1: 

Make a little pencil arrow on the top sheet of paper in your home printer's tray to show which side is up and in which direction it goes through the printer. (Sounds dumb, but will make your life so much easier in step 3) 

Print the photo in the size of your choice on plain copy paper. Bigger is better, mine was 5x7".

  Step 2:

Got a good image? Now cover it with a piece of calico that's at least  1" bigger all round and tape it down with packing or masking tape on top of the picture. Make sure none of the tape covers the area of the picture.

Tip: If the calico it crinkled, iron it first!

 Step 3: 

Put the paper back in the paper tray (Use the arrow from step 1 to show you which way! Mine was up-side down) and press print again. Your picture will come out perfectly printed on calico. 

Now trim and fray the edges, sew it onto your layout and you're on your way to be a good cowboy. Yee-haw.

Psst: This is also great for giving photos a vintage look!

UFOs

I bet you too have UFOs in your house. They are the UnFinished Objects in everyone's craft pile. This week I managed to actually finish a few of them. These are all based on diverse class layouts I had started during my class and they were left to rot in the UFO pile. I thought it might cheer your crafty little soul to see them finished.

"Our Wedding"

This one is the cover page of my sister-in-laws wedding album. By then I had used up all the photos, but ended up with an uneven number of pages. A bit of planning would have been useful, but now it's a photo-less page. And why not?

Clever chicks will see that it's based on the resist technique I had in this month's issue of Scrapbooking Memories (and that means you'll have to get the mag, I can't share it here)

To make the flower center I glued a glass cabochon on some pretty Prima Songbird paper with Glossy Accents (Dimensional Magic works too), let it dry...

...cut it out and glued it on a round silver filigree and then on a flower:

Once that was on the page I added a charming bouquet and a charming pin with some gold stamens:

I used the Sew Easy tool with the "love" design for the stitched circle: 

 A sprinkling of pearl Mica fragments gives the title a bit of shimmer. It's hard to capture in a photo, but it looks like mother-of-pearl. Very pretty.

"Fantabulous"

This one had likely grown roots in the UFO pile, it's been there so long. It's based on an iris-folding technique we did in class and this one needed some TLC to come to life. 

 I thought some pretty flowers to pep it up and I had a rolled satin flower in my stash, but the black gardenia and the grey rose were just the contrast I needed. 

 Honestly that's not the colours I would normally reach for, but look how nice they are. I added a little glimmer mist to the black one, by the way, and a couple of brown mini leaves. And lastly, there is a cute baby foot charm (painted bronze):

"Flower children"

You'll have to take my word for it, that's what the title means. This page is for my parent's yearly album they're getting for Christmas. Thankfully they're not blog junkies, so the secret should be safe. This one is based on the "Our Street" layout I taught recently:

For this version I used the giant white mulberry flower too (this time tugged under) and a cluster of a cherry blossom, a white orchid, and a white and a pink rose bud on a  silver filigree wrap:

I hope this inspires you to dig out some of your own UFOs and finish them! 

Geli