1.20.2011

Guest Post- Southern Fairy Designs!

You're in for a treat today! I've got Steph from Southern Fairy Designs posting for me! She's got a great blog full of lots of jewelry tutorials (and you know how much I love making jewelry!) Take it away Steph!
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Hi I'm Steph. I'm a mechanic for British Airways here in the UK, I spend my days at work fixing aircraft and in my spare time I also fly gliders, so I guess that makes me an all round airhead. Crafting is my escape from the blokey work scene, it gives me the chance to make some fab bits and pieces for our new house, jewellery to go with the many shoes and dresses I seem to own and cards for all our family and friends. Quite a contrast I know, grubby overalls during the work week then evenings and weekends all girly and dressed up!

Here we have yet another piece of Anthropologie jewellery that I've been lusting for, 'Power Of 3', but immensely disliked the £38 price tag that came attached to it. So I decided to raid my stash again and make my own take on the piece.. If you want to give it a try to then you'll need:

  • 21 beads ( 7 each of 3 different colours)
  • 2m of a coordinating colour ribbon (i used 2 different colours 1m of each)
  • 1m of tulle fabric
  • Handful of jumprings
  • Necklace clasp
  • Scissors
  • Pliers
  • Needle (not pictured)
  • Coordinating colour thread (not pictured)
  • Fraystop (not pictured - optional)
  1. Firstly cut the lenght of fabric in half. Don't worry if the edges are raggy like mine, they can always be trimmed and fraystopped later. (I just fancied a bit of a raw look to it)
2. Feed one length of fabric through a jumpring and tie a knot. Repeat for the other piece of fabric.
3. Attach several jumprings to one of the jumpring/fabric knots and a necklace clasp to the other.

Now for the main piece of the necklace

4. Fold the ribbon in half and cut it to make 1m lengths.
5. Fold the ribbon lengths in half again and tie them together, forming a loop.
6. Decide which colour of your beads will be each bead type on the original necklace so you can follow the pattern.

7.Thread the first bead onto a ribbon length, use a needle to thread the ribbon through the bead if need be, then tie a knot after the bead.

8. Thread the second bead onto the same ribbon as the first bead, don't tie a knot yet.
9. Thread the third bead onto the other ribbon length.

10. Take both lengths of ribbon and tie a knot below the second bead.

11. Repeat the beading process, using the original as a template for the order to thread the beads on, till you've used all 21 beads.

12. Leave a couple of cms of ribbon after the final set of beads then tie a double knot to form a loop to end the bead section of the necklace. Trim the ribbon down.

Now to attach the 2 necklace sections together.. well at first I tried putting the fabric through the ribbon loop and making a knot.. This looked awful as the picture below shows, but maybe some of you could make it a beautiful knot if you wanted to.. so I tried a tidier method..


13. Take a fabric section and feed the loose fabric through the ribbon loop about 3cm or so.

14. Fold it back on itself and sew it together. (I used quite heavy stitches on the parts that won't be seen when I'm wearing it, the beads are quite heavy so I wanted the stitches to hold).

15. Repeat for the other end of the necklace.
16. Trim and fraystop the fabric edges if you need/want to.

And that's it all done..here's how mine turned out when it was all finished.

17. Put it on and show your OH, make them take a picture of you wearing it and then have to explain why he's taken a picture of you for no reason and that yes you did actually make the lovely piece of jewellery hanging round your neck...

Or is step 17 just what happens in my house everytime I make something new?
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Isn't it fantastic? She's so talented! Thanks for stopping by Steph! Be sure to check out Southern Fairy Designs for more fantastic tutes!

2 comments:

The Loops said...

This is gorgeous! I haven't really tried my hand at jewelry making, but this would be worth the try!

Unknown said...

definately, give it a go and email me a photo if u do it please, then I'll blog them :)

thanks for having me amie!

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