Jewelry Making Made Easy: Simple Kits Make Beautiful Jewelry

Who says you need to purchase expensive beads and pendants to make beautiful jewelry. They key to making beautiful jewelry is imagination and purchasing in either bulk or in kits. Purchasing your jewelry supplies in bulk is a bit of an expense at first, but it lasts longer and makes more jewelry than purchasing individual pieces.

This past Christmas, my wonderful sister bought me a bead and pendant kit. She also bought me some beautiful natural tone cord to match the kit.

To make the necklace and matching bracelet in the above photo, I used the following supplies:

Bead Gallery Pendant Kit

Blue Moon "Lost & Found" 1mm cord, 26 inches long

Stretchy cord, 1mm, roughly 10 inches long

Scissors

Pendant

From the Bead Gallery Pendant Kit, you will need: 4 orange beads, 4 beige and 2 white/blonde beads and the included pendant. This kit has many colors and styles of beads, but I found the solid colored round beads worked best with the included pendant.

String the beads in the following order: orange, brown, orange, brown, blonde, pendant, blonde, brown, orange, brown, and orange. The soft brown color of the cord matches very well with these particular beads. It also accents the beautiful pendant. You can finish this necklace off a couple of different ways. You can tie a simple knot to have it be a set length, or you can tie separate slipknot style knots to allow the length to be shortened depending on your outfit or mood. I made mine with the latter to fit my changing moods.

Bracelet

The bracelet is simple to put together. The key to this is using the proper thickness of stretchy cord verses the bead hole. For this bracelet, I used six different beads, in order, and then one large bead as the seventh bead. The large bead is different each time, but matches the color scheme and adds a bit of randomness to the set design. Since this kit contains ¼ pound of assorted beads, it might take time to find the perfect beads for your bracelet. Don't worry about finding the exact beads to match your necklace. One of the greatest things about purchasing a kit, or beads in bulk, is that you can make multiple projects from the same set. Take your time and have fun. Since each kit is different, your bracelet may come out different than mine. That is fine. Use your imagination and have fun.

For more simple jewelry projects, try making a Spring Charm Necklace, or Silver and Stone Earrings and Necklace.

Source: Personal Experience