Cat’s Birthday Pendant Necklace and Bracelet

For I don’t know how many years now, I’ve been making my buddy Cat a necklace for her birthday. We are two crafty girls and love making things for each other’s birthdays. I used to ask her what color scheme she wanted and I’d make it so. But after many years of friendship, we pretty much covered it all, so I just use my own judgement now. Here’s what I came up with this year. What do you think?

I used beads I already had on-hand, but I typically get my beads and supplies from A.C. Moore. It’s not the fanciest of bead stores but I usually find what I’m looking for there. And sometimes it’s even something that I just LOVE like this pendant. It just screamed Cat to me so it had to be hers. Next I had to choose a ribbon. I couldn’t decide which one though, so with input from my Bento Bloggers and Friends, I went with ‘A’. They did well as the Brown Satin Loop Edge Ribbon goes nicely with the ridges on the pendant. This is the picture I posted to ask my online buddies their opinions. Which one would you have chosen? I think I would have gone with D for myself!

I’m making an 18″ long necklace so I cut the ribbon to about 20″ on a slant and “Fray checked” the ends to prevent unraveling. I threaded the pendant w/ the ribbon and went with a “Hook and Eye” clasp to complete the necklace. I bought this clasp at my local bead store because I wanted a nicer gold-plated one which can be harder to find at bigger chain stores.

To fasten the clasp, I simply threaded the ribbon through each clasp and tied a tight little knot on each end. I then pulled the knot towards the crimp as far as it will go and pressed down hard on the crimp. Then snip the ends of the ribbon close to the knot, Fray Check and let dry. Voila!

Next I planned out my coil bracelet on my Beading Board. Coil bracelets are fun to make because you don’t have to mess with clasps and it’s kind of a surprise what you end up with even if you plan things out. To make one of these, take a coil bracelet wire (mine came it a pack of like 10, ready to bead, also from AC Moore). Simply twist a few small, tight coils on one end with needle nose pliers as seen in the collage below and start beading. Only thing to be careful of is: keep an eye on the overall pattern that is being created as the wires coil around. I actually had to start this one over after I was almost done because I noticed my largest beads weren’t evenly spaced out around the bracelet as a whole. DOH!

Bead up to about 3/4″ from the end of the wire. Once you’re happy with it, just finish off the other end with a few more tight loops using needle nose pliers.   In all my excitement of making the bracelet (I hadn’t beaded anything in a while), I finished off the whole thing before I realized that I forgot to include any turquoise beads in the bracelet like I had originally intended, to make it REALLY match the necklace. Another DOH! But this time, I decided NOT to start it over again and left it as is. Luckily, I was still pretty happy with the way it turned out despite.  

Here’s just a quick list of tools/materials necessary to make these items:

Tools for both Necklace and Bracelet:
Small needlenose pliers

Necklace:
Ribbon (add a couple inches to the total length necklace you desire)
Clasp set
Pendant
Fray check to seal off the ends if you’re using ribbon.

Coil Bracelet:
Coil bracelet wire
Beads of choice

I’m happy to say that my buddy just loved her jewelry set, and though I’m sure she’d never let on otherwise, she seemed pretty enthralled w/ ’em. Yay!

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Christine, aka happyvballgirl : )

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