Springtime Cluster Necklace Tutorial

Why We Love This Tutorial:

Yay to the warm weather! To celebrate Spring being just about here, we’ve made this super eye-catching, long cluster-style necklace. We’ve used a mixture of our fabulous new dyed shell beads, plus a stunning pink Agate slice pendant. All of these bright colours and certainly putting a spring in our step… 😉

Beads and Materials You’ll Need:

• Mixture of shell beads (we have used these purple shell chips, pink shell chips, green shell chips, yellow shell nuggets)
• 8mm Glass Beads (we have used these yellow transparent 8mm glass round beads)
• Turquoise Round Beads (we have used 6mm and 8mm Turquoise rounds)
• Agate Slice Pendant (we have used a Pink Agate Slice Pendant)
• 50x 6mm Silver Barrel Beads
• approx. 50x 25mm ballpins
• approx. 50x 8mm Jump Rings
• Clasp of your choice (we have used a simple lobster clasp)
• Rope chain

Tools You’ll Need:

• Round Nose Pliers
• Two pairs of pointy nose flat pliers for opening and closing jump rings.

Method:

1. Start by making all of your dangles first. We have made approximately 50 dangles. We have used the coil technique for making these dangles, which is a very easy way of creating dangles that are secure and can not fall of your design. In this technique, you simply coil the headpin around you round noose pliers. You need to use relatively short headpins (about 25mm) and you’ll wrap about 2-4 times. Some of the large nuggets will only get one small loop, but that’s ok!
2. Attach these dangles to your 8mm jump rings. Do this by opening the jump ring, sliding on the dangle, then closing the jump ring.
3. Attach an 8mm jump ring to the pendant.
4. Cut your chain to your desired length (ours is quite long at about 80cm)
5. Now it’s the fun bit! Start assembling your necklace. Start by attaching your clasp to one end of the chain. This will ensure your dangles do not fall off as your thread them on. Then, one by one slide on your dangles (with a silver barrel bead between each dangle). When you get to the mid-point, slide on your pendant. Then, keep going with the dangles.
6. Attach an 8mm jump ring to the other end of your necklace for the clasp to hook into (and also to ensure the dangles can’t fall off!).
7. And, you’re done!