I made a necklace

 I have been wanting a brightly colored statement necklace, I have seen a few I have wanted in Anthropologie & a few on the Stella and Dot website. The Anthropologie prices were ok, but the other? Not so much. So I hit up Hobby Lobby to see what kind of beads I could find, I found these dark jade/ light turquoise beads & decided on these. The hard part where I had trouble deciding was finding the smaller beads I wanted. They have every style & color imaginable & it was a tough choice! These are a metallic grey hematite, I got some faceted & some round smooth. They are heavy!

Here is the pattern I was going with first, doing an alternating pattern... 

 Then I changed my mind, I thought it looked too uniformed & orderly & I don't like that.

I'll just keep it simple with this pattern, we will see how it looks! 

Tried to combine both strands on the side & turn it into a single strand? UM no, stringing both silk cords into one small bead turned into a huge headache, removed the combined strands & decided to keep them separate. 

 I have a plastic storage container full of unwanted & broken jewelry, whenever I decide to do a project, I try to recycle pieces, hardware & beads from these so save money & to reuse what I have! I found an old wooden pendant necklace with a lobster clasp, so I just took the clasp from that necklace to use on my new one.

Starting to look better...

I was not trusting my knot skills with this silk bead cord, I thought I needed some kind of backup. The only thing I could think of is clear nail polish. Just maybe if my knots suck & want to come untied, that this might harden around it & keep my beads from falling all over the place when, or IF it wants to break. Hopefully not. Hey, whatever works! 

Oh & I had to use pomade on the ends of the cord, because the twisted strands were becoming unraveled & separating & it was starting to become impossible to put the round hematite beads on! LOL the pomade worked like a charm, I might be the only person needing nail polish & pomade to make a necklace. I know, it's strange. But it worked! 

I'm done! My dress form is modeling my finished piece. It turned out pretty, it is heavier than I thought it would be, hopefully my recycled clasps are heavy-duty enough to hold these strands. 

If I can make a necklace, anyone can! It's always fun to try something once & see how it turns out. Who knows, you might have a hidden talent just waiting to come out & you can start the next Stella and Dot or Silpada! I just saw this MARCHESA necklace on Stella's website, I have decided that I love this & this might be my next DIY project!

 Some other jewelry brands I love are Fossil  Nine West American Vintage, & Lucky. There are some super-cute beaded wrap bracelets on the Lucky site. I seem to gravitate towards bohemian, vintage-inspired designs. I love jewelry!