Welcome to my first DIY! In addition to my own jewelry, I’m making each of my bridesmaids a bracelet in my color palette as a small part of their overall gift (but more on that later). I realize that I should probably be working on the more complicated bridal necklace instead of something so simple, but I do have to make six of them, so better start now than forget.

Would you like to step into my bead studio? It’s very spacious, as you can see:

Actually, not so much, but what it lacks in space it certainly makes up for in quantity:

But I digress. Let me take you through the creation of one of these bracelets. My intent was to bring in the three colors of the palette into a small token that wasn’t an immediate focal point (so no necklace) but instead just a small detail that adds a touch of uniformity to them.

My mise en place:

Blue-violet and orange (although they call it dark red) aventurine beads, 4mm and 6mm respectively, mono-filament string (also known as fishing line!), toggle clasps, and my trusty wire clipper.  Beads and findings were purchased at Michaels from their “bead gallery” brand, which at the time was on sale, so bonus.

I really liked the colors by themselves, so instead of doing a pattern like I am generally wont to do, I instead decided to have two layers of nearly solid color.  I added crystal spacers at the end to give a little more length to the bracelet and to also add a bit of sparkle:

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until after I finished stringing the larger beads that the two rows weren’t even, so rummaging through my haphazard collection of random beads found me a string of 8mm amethyst rounds which nicely completed the palette and, with one on each end, made the orange row the perfect length:

Like I said, this was a pretty simple project, so I’m not going to insult your intelligence by giving step-by-step instructions on how to essentially transfer beads from a temporary string onto a “permanent” one, but if anyone has any questions on this, post in the comments section and I’ll get back to you.

When I start getting into the real work, aka my necklace, then you’ll see some real step-by-step instruction.

So, what do you think?  Anyone else make their BM’s a little something for the day?

Designing and making jewelry has been a particular passion of mine since I was but a young girl stringing seed beads to monofilament line and weaving friendship bracelets out of embroidery floss.  Since then, I’d like to say my designs have become a little more elaborate.

First, the inspiration for some of my more recent projects:

From left to right:  Marni and Louis Vuitton, two of my favorite design houses.  I love me some Consuela Castiglioni and Marc Jacobs.

And here is my take on them:

So it was natural that I wanted to dream up an amazing necklace for my dress–not nearly as elaborate as either of these, but enough to give my very simple dress a little touch of sparkle.  So I hied my way down to South Norwalk to visit Beadworks, and purchased for the very reasonable price of $35 this strand of tanzanite, which plays into my color scheme but isn’t nearly as expensive as sapphire:

But I wasn’t satisfied with just the tanzanite, I suppose, because a few months later trawling consignment shops for amazing deals on clothes in Greenwich, I stumbled across a little bead store called Femmegems that I of course had to visit, and left with a longer strand of iolite chips.  The iolite rounds I later bought when revisiting Beadworks.

So now, armed with all of these stones and enough chain to play around with (I have about 3 yards total, I think), I now have to set about the process of actually creating this necklace.  So I’ve started some sketches, keeping the halter neckline of my dress in mind (note:  I’m not the world’s best sketcher.  Usually I tend to wing it):

Yes, I know that “technically” necklaces shouldn’t be paired with halter necklines, but despite loving to design jewelry, I don’t wear much beyond necklaces and occassionally bracelets.  So I’d much rather preserve my personal style than follow some arbitrary rule.  The design itself I think I have set–two strands spaced out, floating around the collarbone.  I have a few options in clustering (or not) the stones–this is what I need help with.

Which leads me to ask:  of the options presented, which one(s) (if any) do you like?