Introduction to Jewelry Making: From Amateur to Artist

1. Trailer: Hey guys, I'm Brit, the founder of Brit &Co. Today, I'm here to teach you how to make your own jewelry. You can actually make all of these types of necklaces and bracelets and watches and earrings after this class, I promise you. I'm going to show you all of the techniques, all the tools, and components and how to use them. We're going to actually walk through how to repair broken jewelry as well. Because if you're like me, you throw it into your bag a lot and chains break and earrings backs fall off, we're going to fix it. Then I'm going to show you how to actually integrate everything you've just learned to create the ultimate statement piece. You can actually translate this design into all kinds of different types of jewelry making skills. So, if you're excited that I'm excited, so to let's dive in. 2. Tools Overview: All right. Let's talk about your tools. We're going to kick it off with pliers. First off, are your wire cutter pliers. Now, these look like the types of pliers you might buy in the hardware store, but they're much smaller and manageable for things like jewelry. You use them to cut wire just like the name says and also things like chain. These come in a lot of handy especially if you're making necklaces. Next are your needle-nose pliers. These are the workhorse pliers. You use these all the time. You can see they have a round side on the outside and a flat side on the inside. They're great for opening up O-rings in class and holding small objects and beads. These are really my favorite types of pliers to buy. So, you'll definitely want to use those a lot. Next, are your flat nose pliers. Unlike the needle-nose pliers, they're actually flat on the outside and on the inside. What's great about them is that they actually crimp really, really well, and they can hold classes down really well as well. So, you'll use them a lot for your cord ends. Basically, creating the very ends of your jewelry pieces, and we'll get into that in just a couple of minutes. Opposite of your flat nose pliers are your round nose pliers. It's pretty self-explanatory here. These are round on both sides of the pliers. They start thicker and get thinner. This are best for creating loops in bins into your wires and into your jewelry. These I also use quite a bit. So, they're definitely one of the more popular ones. Now, this plier is called the looping plier, and you see it's a combination of a flat nose plier and a round nose plier. However, this round nose actually has three different thicknesses, and this is great for creating different types of sizes of loops and coils in whatever jewelry you are making. So, this is another really fun one to have and you got to have a lot of pliers. If you can't though, if you can only have one, I suggest getting the three in one plier. What's great about this is it's your wire cutters, your flat nose plier, and your round nose plier all in one. It's a lot of efficiency in one set of pliers. If you want to take it up just a level, I would recommend having two pliers, the three in one, and the needle nose because you actually want to be holding in a lot of your jewelry especially if it's really dainty. Together at once and being able to touch everything and bend and so forth. So, these are definitely the my two favorite picks the three in one and the needle-nose. If you can just get one again, try going with the three in one. These are great set of pliers. All right. So, beyond pliers, there are also a few other tools that virtually every jewelry-maker needs. A set of scissors, they can be small like this for cutting smaller things or bigger. You use scissors of course to cut things like fabric and leather and ribbon and so forth. Some measuring tape, and I recommend the soft measuring tape instead of a ruler because you want to measure chain and the length of your ribbons or your chords. So, measuring tape comes in handy quite a bit. An embroidery needle and this is great if you're actually using stuff like embroidery thread or smaller pieces of code, and it's actually also great for beading. So, you can actually bead really easily with the embroidery needle. Then a caliper. A caliper is used to actually measure the width of the bead. All you do is you put your bead in here. You actually want to move this thing up and down, and this actually lets you precisely measure the width of your bead. You can measure it in inches, centimeters. Most beads are measured in millimeters. So, just know that there are ten millimeters in every centimeter. So, you can see this bead is roughly about 18 millimeters wide, and you can use that then to go buy similar size beads to match your beads if you need new ones and so forth. That's what a caliper is. 3. Findings: All right. So, now we're going to talk about findings. Findings are the things that you use to seal off your jewelry and connect two pieces together. Now, first are your O rings. Now there's O rings that look like this, just a circle. You can see these have no break in them. It's really just a solid loop. These are used to connect two things together just like these two beads, and it's mostly meant to be decorative. So, you just want to use an O ring to separate different parts of your jewelry. There's also the split ring. This looks like a mini little key chain. It actually coils around a couple of times. What's great about this is you can use it to connect things together but it really does hold things that might need a little bit extra sturdiness. So, this necklace right here for instance actually uses a large split ring because of all the fabric and everything that's hanging down here. So, make sure that it doesn't come apart and it's sturdy enough to hold the weight of anything that's below it. Finally, there's the jump ring. The jump ring is definitely what you want to use your needle nose pliers for it because it actually splits in half. This is great for easily connecting things together. I could easily connect this into this little loop here and close it off. A lot of times, the end where your class meets will come with a jump ring. So, you just clasp this right together, and it's really about easy. So, again for the larger ones you can use your fingers. But for the little ones you definitely want to pull out those needle nose pliers and make sure you seal them up tightly so that they don't fall off. All right. Now, let's talk about clasps. We have a few different types of clasp. First is the lobster clasp. It looks something like this although I think it looks more like a whale. But you can think of it either way. Really straightforward. This one's pretty sturdy. These are a little bit more expensive but again I think they're worth it because they are so sturdy. Looks a lot like probably a lot of the clasp wire on your professional jewelry at different stores. You also have the spring clasp. This is also really popular one. You can see there's actually spring inside of it hence the name and it just springs open and shut. I like these a lot but sometimes if they can get a little bit broken a little bit easier than the lobster clasp so you just got to be careful with that. Then you have the toggle. What's great about the toggle is it's just really easy to put on. It's like a T and an O and you just connect them like this and then I'll hold your bracelet or your necklace just like this. So, you want to make sure that it's actually locked together and then it will sit just right on your neck or your wrist. Finally, there's the barrel. The barrel looks like a barrel hence the name, and it just screws together. So, it's also another easy one to put on. You have to make sure you screw it up just right and then you're done. All right. Next up are your beading pens. Obviously, they're for beading and there are two different types. There are head pins and eye pins. They look similar, so let me point out the difference. The eye pin is actually great if you want to connect different objects to the end of your beads just like this. You can see how I could continue to link an old ring or I could actually connect another bead to this one because I have used the eye pin. The head pin is just a flat end so it's great if it's actually just the finished side of a bead and that way you don't want anything else poking up and out. So, that's the difference between the head pin and the eye pin. We'll show you how to use these a little bit later on in the class. Now, next are your terminator's. These are a fun word. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger would approve. These are your fold overs. The fold over actually is used to close the end of something like if it's ribbon or cord before you put on your O rings and you really create kind of the clasp section of your jewelry. All you do with this one is you can use your flat nose pliers and clamp the fold over cordings together just like this, and then that way you are set up. It's locked and you don't have to worry about your fabric or your cord falling out of your piece of jewelry. Then you have your crimb beads and your crimp beads are basically really tiny versions of your fold overs. These are used specifically for crimping together things like wire which are really small and creating this little loop so that you can attach your clasp or your O ring or any other type of jewelry to the end of something really delicate like a wire. Next, we have your glue ins. These just like the name you actually have to use a little bit of glue and then you want to hook in the cord or ribbon or rope just to the end. So, this is a great example. You actually put multiple pieces of cord or fabric or ribbon into these. You want to put your glue and stick these in and then adhere them together and they will stay. It creates a nice kind of solid and really polished end to your jewelry. Then lastly we have ribbon ends. Very similar except for of course, they're used for things like ribbon in this case we use them with zippers. Again, the flat nose pliers or your needle nose pliers are great for this to just cramp them down once you have your glue in there and just hold it for a few seconds until it really starts to stick and adhere to the rest of your jewelry piece. So, those are your terminator's. All right. So, now the different types of jewelry you can make from earrings to bracelets and rings. These are your standard hoop earrings and pretty straight forward. You actually just flip this back and forth when you put them in your ear. You want to put this pen side end, close the hoop over it and you wear them just like that. Then you have your fishhooks. These are great for dangly earrings, chandelier earrings. One thing to know about these is if you're not using a earing back, they could fall out a little bit. So, you want to make sure that you either use your pliers to sort of point them down a little bit or use a rubber earring back to make sure that those stay in your ears. Then you have your studs. These are great for gluing different types of stones or gems or something on top of. This is not a dangly earring of course. So, this is just a single stud any one in each ear and there's different sizes that you can buy large and small that you can get. Then finally are your lever box. These are also for dangly earrings. The only difference is that they actually will probably not fall off because they have this extra little safety precaution that will close in around the backside of the earring to make sure they don't fall out of your ears which is great. Finally, we have some of the basics for rings and bracelets. You can get these types of ring bases that you can use to glue different types of stones or beads onto which are really nice. They come in silver and gold. You can also get different types of foundational elements for bracelets and these are great for wrapping things around like cord, embroidery thread, leather if you want to as well or you can actually use your glues and bead things onto here. All right. Finally, we have to talk about glues. Glues are great if you're actually putting any types of beads or adhering to parts of your jewelry together obviously. There are different types of glues you can use for jewelry making. The first is superglue. It's probably the most commonly known glue. Actually not my favorite glue because it dries within about 30 seconds. It's not very waterproof and because it dries so fast that means that if you make a little mistake or you want to change something later it's really hard to do. I just don't really recommend the superglue. What I do recommend is the E6000. This is probably one of our favorite glues here at Brit Co. It takes about 48 hours to dry. So, you have a little bit of wiggle room if you want to change things around a little bit. It adheres to almost any surface and it's waterproof which is really great especially for jewelry that you might want to take in the water or in the shower. Then there's the Quick Hold glue. This is pretty good. It dries in about two to three minutes. So, you have a little bit of time to move things around if you need to. But it's water resistant not fully waterproof and it can actually damage some surfaces. So you want to be really careful about making sure your tables are covered or anything's covered that you don't want damaged when you're using the Quit Hold. Finally, we have a G-S Hypo Cement glue. This specifically is perfect for actually beading with really tiny beads. Kind of like the bracelet that I'm wearing. You can actually see the point it has here is super precise. So, it's great for actually setting tiny stones or beads together, and it's a really good glue. You really want to use it for those types of projects whereas the E6000 is a much better all purpose glue that actually can be used for all types of jewelry making. Those are all of your tools. Now, let's make some jewelry. 4. Components: All right. We've talked about your tools, your findings, and your glues, now we're going to talk about components and show you how it all ties together. So, let's start with wire. The first thing I want you to know about wire is that if you have a larger gauge wire, it's actually a smaller wire. So, it's just one thing that some people get tripped up on that I think you should know. The size of wire is different based on the types of beads you might be using or the type of design you want to use in your jewelry. Now speaking of beads, beads can come in all different sizes, shapes, and colors. A lot of them come freely just like this, and some of them will actually come on a string that you can take apart just like this. One other thing to know about your beads is they can also come in a variety of price points. So beads can cost as little as 10 cents, you can get things like pearls which might be hundreds of dollars, and if Justin Bieber's ever touched one that could be really expensive. You got to watch out when you're buying your beads. Now next up, we're going talk about chains. There are a lot of types of chains you can buy, a lot of it is just preference. The first is a snake chain. You can see that when I wiggle it just like this, it looks like a snake. This one is called a cable chain because it looks like a series of cables connected together, and these are just the same types of little loops all interconnected. Now, the next one looks a little bit similar. This is called a flat curb chain, but it has a little divot in the middle of it which makes it lay a bit flatter just like this. Now, flat curb chains can also come in bigger sizes like this one. These are both called flat curve chains even though they look quite different. So, it's one thing to watch out for and to note when you're designing your jewelry. Next is the lantern chain. This is probably one of my favorites because it looks like a series of little lanterns strung together. It's really lightweight which is also nice, and it also moves like a snake if you move it around. It's really fun to do as well. Now if you were alive in the 90s, you probably know our next chain, the ball chain. This is definitely great for the grunge type look, a little bit of a rougher look, you've probably used it for key chains before. This is exactly what it sounds like. They're little balls, they're all chained together. Then lastly we have the Figaro chain. Figaro is probably one of the more delicate dainty chains. It's great for charms and holding lightweight objects like that. It comes in a variety of metals and colors as well sizes. Then we also have rhinestones here which can be considered a chain, but they're also decorative embellishments. They also come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Here are a few examples of those rhinestones. We also have cords, and there are various types of cords you can use for your jewelry projects. These can be used as your chains or they can actually be used as embellishment within your jewelry as well. So, we get started with rope right here. I think most people have heard of rope before. Comes in all different types of shapes, sizes, and colors, some even have patterns within the rope themselves. This is embroidery floss. Embroidery floss is great for wrapping. You can actually use your embroidery needle, and you can tie beads together with embroidery floss, you can create different patterns in your jewelry. Maybe you're using a leather and you want to sow through that. That's great for embroidery floss. You also have paracord. Paracords are a lot like rope. It's a little bit more flexible, not as rigid as rope. Also comes in a lot of different colors. This is swayed cord. It also comes in all kinds of colors you can buy. I really do like the black and brown's for this one, it just makes it look a lot sharper and the leather effect with the suede is really nice as well. Then last but not least, we have waxed cord, and I like to layer waxed cord together just like this, and it creates a really nice effect that looks sharp and polished when you're creating jewelry, especially when you combine it with metals, like we've done here. All right, now, I'm going to show you some examples of what these different jewelry pieces look like when all of these components and findings and tools come together. So, let's get started with this necklace here. This is made using a Figaro chain, some wire, and then everyday objects like hex nuts. Another example of something you probably already have lying around your house are t-shirts, and t-shirts can make great jewelry. This necklace was actually made out of an old t-shirt cut into strips, and we used a ribbon cord end to attach them all together, a split ring here to make sure that we can hold it all up, and then a Figaro chain to give it a little bit of a dainty look up top since we've got so much going on down here. This necklace is actually really easy. It's made with a snake chain and some sculpy clay that we just molded into all these different types of geometric shapes. Really cool, really polished, and really, really simple. I love this one too because it combines this really cool patterned rope with a glue in cord end and all these different beautiful beads that were placed together. Ear rings are really, really fun and easy to make. These two pairs were especially easy. This one just requires you to cut a feather shape out of a piece of leather. We painted part of it gold and then we use these fish hooks to make it a daingly look in your ears. We use the same fish hooks on this one, but instead of using leather, we actually use sequence and created a cool diamond pattern using these eye pens that you would usually put beads onto, but the sequence work just, as well as, you see. Then we've got some bracelets. This bracelet was made out of zippers we had lying around. We used another ribbon in here and a spring class to hook it together, more zippers, but just a single one instead of the zippers with the fabric. This one we went over a little bit before earlier in class. It's a basic bracelet that we used, our glue toward here, all these different beads too and just create a cool pattern. This watch was actually a broken watch that we got the watch head and we used ribbon and the swayed cord to create a cool bracelet look for the watch itself. Then this last one was actually made with paracord and embroidery floss. You can see how we used that to create this really nice effect, cool little pattern all around the paracord and to attach it together. We then used the ribbon cord end as well. We have a jump ring here and another spring classed to seal it up together. All right, next we have these hoop earrings, and all that we've done here is actually added a chain on top of the hoops, and then we used our embroidery floss to adhere the chain and the hoops together. It gives a really cool textured effect. So, let's add a little bit of weight, so it feels really sturdy and really nicely polished. Now, speaking of stuff you might have lying around your house, you probably also have some duct tape lying around your house. These earrings are so much fun. These are duct tape feather earrings similar to our leather feather over here, actually just cut out a feather shape here, and used a fishhook to actually tie them up at the end and let you be able to wear your tape proudly. Then this one is really fun. It has rope, as well as, rhinestones woven through the rope. We used embroidery floss to then connect the chains and the rope together, actually added a couple of layers of chains in here and then finished it up with a little bit of bling and another set of rhinestones at the bottom. This next necklace, we actually created this base using a big piece of leather, then we cut out zippers and we used chains to create this really cool colored pattern effect down here, a jump ring to then connect the zipper to the flat curb chain which we used for the top part of the necklace to hold it all together. Then we've got this one, this is just some rope. This is actually pipe if you can believe it or not. Paracord, it's just wrapped around each other, more piping and more rope at the bottom. You can see it doesn't really take that much stuff, it just takes a little bit of creativity, you can create some really cool necklaces. Now, we also have the mother of all necklaces. This is actually my favorite necklace and it combines so many of the different elements we've talked about today. You've got your cable chain all around the outside, you can see how big this is compared to the cable chain I showed you down here. This is actually just some silk fabric that's been woven in and out of the cable chain. Then we've got this really beautiful rope which was used with a glue in cord end up here, and then another chain here. Now, this is actually flat curb chain, and it's all tied together with this decorative embroidery floss which is really beautiful. You can also see that there's actually a lobster class and a flat curb chain to actually close it together at the end. This is a beautiful necklace. You can see it's not that hard to make if you understand what all the elements are and how it's put together. 5. Common Jewelry Repairs: Okay. So what happens if your jewelry breaks? Well, don't throw it away, it's probably easily savable. I'm going to walk you through the five most common jewelry repairs so you know how to take advantage of saving your jewelry. Let's get started with this one. In this scenario, the o-ring came off of my necklace, so all I have to do is reattach it. Now, for these jewelry repairs, I'm going to use my needle-nose plier and my three-in-one pliers to actually help facilitate all of the different ways I need to repair these items. This one's really easy though. All I have to do is take my needle-nose pliers and separate my jump ring, just like this. Then, all I'm going to do is reattach it to both the chain and the base of my necklace. Using the pliers again, I can re-tighten the jump ring together, and there you have it, your necklace is restored. All right. Now, on this necklace, my clasp came off, as well as my jump ring. So, I'm going to actually reattach both. It's very similar to the first. So, pick up your jump ring, take your needle-nose, your three-in-one, open it. I've actually used a head pin to take all of these chains and put them together. Then I'm just going to string each one through my jump ring. Just like that. Now, before I close it, I'm just going to attach the clasp. This is a lobster clasp. It just fits right on top of it. Again, I pick up my other pair of pliers. Take the end and close it up. You want to make sure that the end is really tight so that none of your chains will fall off again. There we go. Once that's done, you can unravel your head pin. You could also just use a simple piece of wire if you don't have a head pin. Take it out, and voila. Your necklace is done and ready to wear. This is one of the most common ways to repair jewelry. You actually need to replace the whole chain. You can see here, the chain on this necklace actually just broke in half, so it's pretty much unwearable as it is right now. To do this, you're actually just going to want to purchase a whole piece of new chain. This one actually has a clasp already, but if it doesn't, you could purchase a new clasp as well. I'm going to unclasp it. Now, I want to measure the chain to match the dimensions of the original necklace. I'm going to do two different measurements, one for each side. They're both the same length so that's not going to be very difficult. So, I'm just going to put my chain up next to this one, roughly measure the length. It's just about here. Now, using my three-in-one pliers, these have wire cutters in them, I'm actually just going to cut the chain. So, now I have an exact size chain that matches the length of my original necklace. Now, I'm going to make another copy of this, so I can do one on each side. So again, this time, I can just measure it to be equal to my first chain. Should be right about here. I'd take my wire cutters, sniff it off. Now, I have my two chains for my new necklace. So how do you attach them? Well, you want to first un-attach the old chains. We can get rid of those. You can see that these actually have a jump ring that's attaching this bulkier part of the necklace to the chain. So, I'm just going to undo the jump ring and remove the chains on each side. Just like this. All right. I've got them with my pliers. I've now opened my jumper ring, and I can just take the chain right off. You can save the jump ring or use a new one, if you want. For this one, I'll just reuse the same one I already had on my necklace, take my pliers, loop it back through the necklace, and then just attach the end of my chain right on to my o-ring, and then close it up. Just like that. You just do the same thing with the other side, and close it up. Now finally, I'm just going to attach my lobster clasp. You can use the same one from your old necklace. Again, if you have a new chain that has a lobster clasp on it, you can use that one too. It really doesn't matter in this case. So, we'll just take this one off by un-attaching it from the jump ring. You can see the redundance here, there's a lot of a jump ring attachments. These things are literally like the glue between chains on jewelry. So I have it here. I'm just going to string it through the end of my chain and close it up again. Just like that. Now, I have my necklace fully restored, ready to wear, no chains broken. All right. For this next jewelry repair, you'll notice that the cord end of my necklace broke, actually just de-atttached from the cord itself. So to fix this one, I'm just going to attach a new cord end. I'm going to show you how to do a crimp cord end, but first we need to remove this. So much like the other jewelry repairs, I'm going to remove the o-ring first, take the cord end off, put on the new cord end, and then show you how to attach it to you cord. This o-ring is really teeny tiny so I definitely need my pliers to help me take it off. All right. I've got one, I got the other. All right. You can see, it'll come right off. Just like that. Okay. So we got that cord end off. Now, we have to after reattach the new one. Now, to do this, you're going to get a new cord end that looks like this. This is a crimp on cord end, and we're actually going to crimp it on. You want to attach it to your cord first, and then we'll hook it in to the jump ring. So, let's use our pliers because this is so little and fine. I'm going to put my cord right in here, so that sits just like this. Clamp down on it so I got to grip, and then I can use both of my pliers to literally just crimp it on, and make sure that it stays on the cord. Just like that. So, now it's strong. It's not going to come out. Then I can pick back up on my jump ring, attach it onto my cord end, and then use my pliers to tape them together. There's your necklace. Looks great, the cord en is solid. Now, what if you've got a lot of cords that came out of your cord end? For this one, we're actually going to use a little bit of glue. The E6000 that we talked about earlier in this class is the right man for this job. It will give us a little bit of wiggle room to position all the cords in it. Again, it dries in about a couple of days, but it should be pretty solid, even after a few hours. So, before we get started on this one, all you want to do is make sure that your cords are together at the ends. So that looks pretty good, and we can straighten them up right before we attach them to the cord end. If you needed to trim them at all, that would be a good opportunity to do it. Then, we're going to take off the cap of our glue, put a little bit dab into the end of our cord end, just like this. The cord itself will actually push the glue to the ends so you don't have to worry about getting down in there. If you do care, you could use something like a toothpick if you wanted. So again, we're going to pick up our cords. I'm going to bunch the ends together, making sure they're pretty similar in length. Keep them super straight. All right. That looks good. So, you can see they're all bunched together, and now, I'm going to stick them all into the cord end with the glue. You just want to hold it in place for a few seconds until it dries together. All right. That should be good. So, now you just want to let it dry for a few hours depending on the type of glue you use, but your bracelet is repaired. All right. So, I've talked to you through the tools, the repairs, now let's make some jewelry. 6. Create a Statement Necklace: All right ladies and gentlemen, I know you're out there. It's time to take all the skills you've just learned and make a statement necklace. This is the necklace we're going to be creating today. I like to call it not your grandmother's pearl necklace. Because we're actually going to be using a lot of these different sized pearls, some of these really cool metallic tubes, and these beautiful aqua or turquoise beads. We're going to show you how to make this. I know it looks intimidating, it's really not. We're going to take it step by step. The first thing you need to get out all of your materials and we actually have this kit for sale on brit.co/britkits. It comes with the box itself, which is great for organizing jewelry. There's all these little containers for your beads and your rings and your chains. This one in particular comes with tons of head pins, jump rings, chains and clasps, different types of beads ranging from pearls, these are Swarovski pearls, they're really nice. These tubular beads, and these little aqua beads, and then, of course, your tools. So your round nose pliers, your needle-nose pliers, your three-in-one, all of that stuff. It all comes in this kit. If you already have some of it at home, awesome, you can use that too. Just wanted to let you know it's available, makes it much easier. So, to get started, I'm going to pull out my chain. Now, I know that most jewelers make necklaces in 16 inch, 18 inch, 20 inch. But because you're making your own, you actually have the option to size it however you want to. So, I'm just going to wrap it around my neck like this. See about where I want it to hang. Maybe I could right here looks good. All right. Now that I know that, I'm just going to use my three-in-one which has the wire cutters, snip off the chain to the link that I like, remove the excess, and then we're going to start from here. So, I'm going to lay it out just like this. Typically, I would have the necklace facing me, but I want it to face you right now. The first step is to prepare all of these little strings of beads that are going to hang off of the chain on your necklace. Now, there's no real structure to this necklace. If you look closely, you can see we have some larger beads that are hanging down, some little beads with twos and threes, some of them have both. The messiness is part of the look, you want it to feel a little unstructured even though there is a nice beautiful pattern actually happening when you look closely. So, I'm going to actually just pull out one of my head pins, and I'm going to make a few chains and links of these with some larger pearls. You can slip these right on, no tools required. So, I'm going to do one with maybe a big one and a kind of big one. I'm going to lay it down and the key is to start in the center. So, this is just to get an idea of what your necklace is going to look like. This is totally movable. Obviously, we're not connecting anything here. So, this is just to really start to visualize it in your head. I'm going to make a few of these. I'm going to pull out some more head pins, lay them here. Maybe I want to do one with medium bead, got a couple of smaller beads on this one. Make one with three beads. Lay it together like this. Do the same thing again. Again, the head pin makes it so that it catches the beat at the bottom so it won't fall off, so that's great. All right. Now, I'm going to make one with one of these metallic tubular beads. These have big openings in them, so they go right on. Do another one just like that. Then I'm going to do a couple with these little aqua beads. So like this. Now, when I'm starting to lay these out, you can see they're all about the same length right now, and you can see when you look back at the statement necklace, it's actually much nicer and gives a lot more texture if you have these different lengths of your pins. So, I can actually start to play with this now. I can pull some of these up a little tighter, closer to the chain. We have some of them hanging down below, and you want to also remember to leave just about half an inch maybe or so so that you can actually loop the pin over. We're going to show you how to do that using your looping tool and attach it to the necklace chain itself. So, know that all of this will actually come up about half an inch once all is said and done. So, let's see, let's see if [inaudible] linked something like this. Make another one here. All right. So, once you have a few of these done, I'm going to show you how to trim them and then make a hook on the end of them to create a loop. So, you can actually start figuring out how you want your necklace to hang and then we'll finish it up just creating the same process over and over again throughout a few more inches of the necklace. So, to start, I'm gonna take my big bead. Now this is my master bead, it's going to go right in the middle, it's the biggest, it 's going to hang the lowest. Because I'm not going to trim it because I wanted to hang it lowest, all I'm going to do is actually take my looping tool or my three-in-one and use the end of it. That's the round end to create a little loop just like this, like an ornament if you think about it. Then you want to just leave it like this and you're going to do the same thing with all of these. However, because that's the longest one and you want them to be varying lengths. For instance, I can take this one, I want it to be a little shorter. I'm actually going to use my same three-in-one tool but use the wire cutter to trim it and then loop it, little jewelry ornament, and lay that out. I'm going to do the same thing with all of these. Again, you can remeasure if you need to. You trim, loop just like that, trim, loop. You can be much more methodical at this if you want to. I like the randomness of it, turns out nice, and you can always change your mind later on and move them around different places if you don't like how it looks. Here is my last one. Short one again because it's the aqua, trim and loop. All right. So, now, I'm going to keep going all around the sides and I'm going to create on my loops as well and then we can do one last reorganization, rearrangement, then I'll show you how to attach these onto your necklace and finish it off. 7. Create a Statement Necklace (continued): Once you have all of your beads on, and your loop looped, you've got it all laid out in a way that you like it. We're then going to start attaching to the chain. Now, the way we do this is by actually taking little clusters of three to four head pins together at once, attaching a jump ring onto them and then hooking it onto the chain. I'm going to walk you through it, but you want to start in the middle. So, you want to take your Big Daddy, your longest head pin, maybe a couple others, maybe at one with the smaller set of beads, definitely a little aqua, baby, head pin and then maybe one of your tubes, and you want to make up again a little cluster just like this. Then you're going to take your jump rings, set this down, while I open it up. Use your pliers to open it up and then just drop each one of these on, just like that. Now, we're going to actually attach it to the chain itself. Again, I'm starting in the middle and then we're going to work to the edges, and you can reconfigure this as you go, that's why we're doing it in little clusters. But you want to make sure that you have the middle chain, you can eyeball it or you can count them to be precise. For right now, I'm just going to eyeball it, this one is pretty much my middle link here. I'm going to hook right into it and then I'm going to close up my jump ring, and that's the first one. I'm going to keep going, putting jump rings and a lot of different clusters of beads and head pins. The key is you want to use every single link of your chain, so they all stay really close and clustered together. So, I'm going to now start going one to the right and one to the left, one to the other right, one to the left, you see how it goes. Open it up, and add my beads. All right. Now this one is done and I'm just going to add it on to the next link. There we go, and close it up. All right, there's two. You're going to keep doing this, making these little clusters and attaching them link by link, left to right, left to right until it ends up looking something like this. Pretty? Now, this one's not actually done yet. You can see here that we have all of our beads hanging, but we actually want to taper the ends a little bit so that it actually angles up a little bit more when you wear it. So, to do that, I'm actually going to cut a few of my smaller beads and make sure that I have them in clusters, and that they're short enough to really taper up at the ends. Really, all I need to do one or two clusters on each side. You can see at the example here, I actually used clusters in sets of two to start thinning out the ends as well. So, again do it whatever you like, this is meant to be your necklace. This class is a sort of tool that you can use to spark creativity and do whatever you want. This doesn't have to be a science, this is a creative class. All right. So, I have a few laid out here. I'll do the same thing, open up my jump rings, attach a couple of these little baby beads onto the end, and then attach it to the last link on the left side. Close it. Make sure its tight. See how that starts to taper up a little bit, looks a little bit nicer and more finished. Let me do the same on the other side. Put them on the last link over here and close it up. So, you can check it out. Now, you can see here. For me, I like a little bit of balance because I put this longer bead here, I just want to even it out. So, something that's shorter that has these two little pearls. So, I'm just going to look at my pile, so it looks like I've got this one. Measure it. Now, I'm actually going to trim it a little bit to match that link. So, going through the same steps that we rehearsed earlier. Just going to trim off the loop, make a new loop and then I can actually just attach this onto the same jump ring already used on that last section. I'm just going to loosen up this loop a little bit, not retighten it, once I get it onto the jump ring. Then use the same tool to tighten, make sure it doesn't fall off. You can use two pliers here as well. It'll probably be easier. So, that's a little bit more balanced. Straighten out your beads. So, it's probably close to, I would say maybe 75, you can go crazy there. You can go 50 bead links, you can go 75, it depends if you want more volume, less volume. Some people might want to go all the way down the whole chain, so in that case, you can have hundreds of these beads. But once it's done, then you just want to attach your clasp on the end. I'm going to put one clasp on one end and then jump ring on the other end, so I make sure it connects them. So, I get my clasp right here, and my jump ring that will attach the chain to the clasp. Then one more jump ring, so I can attach the clasp to the other side. Again, you got to grab your tools, open it up, hook into your chain, hook into your clasp, close it up. Then lastly, just attach this jump ring onto this side. Open it up. Attach it and then close it up. All right. Let's put it on. So, there you go, that's all it takes to make your own statement necklace. Now, just remember you guys can mix it up, come up with your own bead patterns, layer your beads all the way throughout, just do a couple little pendants, whatever you want to do. This is your necklace, be creative with it and have fun. So, we've taught you about all the tools, we've shown you all the materials, we've showed you how to fix your jewelry breaks, we've showed you how to make your own jewelry, you can translate this design into all kinds of jewelry pieces. I'm so excited to see what you guys came up with. If you make this or you make any sort of other jewelry, definitely tweet me. I'm @Brit, or email me hello@brit.co, I would love your designs. I'm also here for questions anytime you want. So, how fun. I hope you guys found this informative, but most of all, happy making. I'll see you guys next time. 8. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: