Tickled Pink Necklace

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I've decided to fix a pink stone necklace and pair of earrings that had lost their luster.  Below, you will see that I did have to buy a chain and strings of pink stones. 

Elements of transformation

The third item from the left is a chain that I had from an old necklace and the forth item is the necklace in need of sprucing up.  Next to the necklace is the earrings in which I will add to, as well.  The necklace and earring set came from Khols and I thought it was real silver but I suppose it was only silver plated. 

Some links were tarnished beyond cleaning


My idea is to add more dangle to the earrings.  Once I started adding, I realized that I did not have head pins but only the pins with the eye-loop.  I had to improvise; I'm sure a real beader would cringe at what I had to do.  I was just going to leave the eye at the end but that looked unfinished, so I used the eye end to attach to the fishhook eye, added three stones and then twisted the straight end up to hook the last stone.  Amateur, yes, but I made the best of it!

Earrings, yes I only have one rubber back!

I think I need a new camera because I am aware that some of these pics are blurry.  Maybe I will buy a new one for myself for Christmas.  :-)  I intended on adding a third dangle, but since I did not have head pins, I thought two looked perfect!  (It orginally only had the one lone stone on each fishhook)

For the necklace, I wanted to make it a long, draping necklace that had stones, then chain, then stones, etc.  My vision did not really come out that good looking at first.  As you can see, the chain I chose was too chunky for the stones.  The stones were more delicate looking that I thought.

Too Mr. T for my liking

So, I decided to go with the chain that I had, pictured in the first picture.  The bad thing about that chain, is that the links are so tiny, that it was very frustrating trying to link them with the eye loops.  I tried not to toss the whole project out the window, but just breathed deeply and forged on.

The smaller chain looked much better, but I think a gauge in-between the Mr. T chain and the tiny-links chain would have made it a more balanced look.

Linking in-progress

I kept the single stones as they were wrapped.  The factory in China did a better job at beading than I am was doing, so why mess with it?  I did make the straight pins of 10 stones and alternating straight pins of 5 stones.  I did have a hard time making the eye hook at the opposite end of the pins.  I think that a person needs practice and patience, which I was low on both at this stage!

I used the clasp from the original necklace for the new one.  With draping necklaces, you can just put it over your head and not unclasp it, but if you want to double it up, then the clasp is needed.


All done!! 
Click on pic to enlarge if you want to critique my eye loops

I tip my hat to beaders.  This was a project that was not that difficult, but took longer than I expected.  The tiny links were enough to drive me to drink!  Instead, I had a cup of instant coffee in my new Cirque du Soleil mug I got last night while at the La Nouba show.  Classy necklace with a classy mug!

Tickled pink in pj's before dinner!