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How to: Rain Drop Necklace

You might notice we love working with these tiny glass beads, and the blue/white/yellow combo is one of our favourites for the summer months. This tutorial uses similar tools and techniques to last week’s eyepin necklace, but this one we make with craft wire instead of ready made pins, as it bends a bit better and gives us more length!

You will need:

42 x 3mm blue beads, 32 x 3mm yellow beads, 22 x 3mm white beads (or whatever colours you have/like!)

3 x 12cm strips of 6mm craft wire

Flat nose pliers, round nose pliers, wire cutters

Chain in your choice of colour and length

1 x 8mm ring

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Firstly, using your round nose pliers, grip the end of one piece of wire 1cm down from the top and bend at a right angle. Turn your hand up and over, wrapping the wire around the pliers and making a loop. Don’t panic if it’s not right first time – keep practising!

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Thread 42 blue beads on to the piece of wire, and then trim down so you have 1cm left on the other end too.

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Repeat the earlier steps to make a loop here. You can then bend this into a rain drop shape – pretty!

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Repeat this all with your yellow and white beads to make decreasingly smaller rain drop shapes.

Grab your flat nose pliers, and gently prise open one of the loops on your blue drop by bending it towards you. Now hook the other loop through the open one, and close again. Repeat with the yellow and white drops.

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If your 8mm loop is a jump ring that can be opened, use your flat nose pliers to open it and thread all 3 of your drops on through one of their loops. If your ring doesn’t open (like mine!) you’ll need to reopen your loops, hook on to the ring and close them again.

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Almost there! Choose whichever length and colour of chain & thread you like and simply pop through the ring.

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Voila! One rain drop necklace all finished. Do in many different sizes and colours for much fun and jewellery making joy.

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How to: DIY Eyepin Necklace

This jewellery design is yet another wonderfully versatile Bunyip piece – try to look past the beads and imagine this with anything lovely from your stash that could be looped together! As long as the bead fits on an eyepin you can whip one of these up – it could be 3 long lengths of tiny beads, it could be 100 different statement beads all individually looped – the choice is yours!

For this design we used: tiny 3mm vintage glass beads, eyepins, a lobster clasp, one jump ring, flat nose pliers, round nose pliers, and wire cutters.

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To start, thread 12 white beads on to an eye pin.

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Use your wire cutters to trim down the excess at the end of the pin, so you have about 1cm left. Grab your round nose plier, and bend the end of the pin at a 90 degree angle, and then use your pliers to turn the wire up and over to make a loop. (This may take a bit of practise if it’s your first time – keep going!)

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Repeat this to make 4 white pins, then repeat to make 6 yellow pins. Next, thread 4 blue beads on to a pin, and work through the previous steps to make 3 shorter pins.

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Using your flat nose pliers, carefully open up one loop on a pin, hook another pin on, and close again. Keep going until all your pins are looped together in whichever order you fancy.

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At the back of your necklace, open up one loop and pop your lobster clasp on. Open up the opposite end and pop the jump ring on.

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And that’s it! Your eyepin necklace is all done. As long as you’ve mastered your loop turning, I think this is one of the most professional (and pretty) ways of turning beads into a necklace.

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New Kit: Pretty Jewellery Set

Introducing our newest jewellery making kit: the Pretty Jewellery Set!

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This necklace & bracelet kit has been designed to fill the gap between our classic Kids Necklace/Bracelet Kits and our other range of making kits. For the age range who love to string beads and are capable of working with a slightly thinner thread and smaller bead size combination, Mattie had her almost 6 year old little girl in mind.

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The kit is made up from a (obviously!) pretty selection of shiny 6mm plastic beads in either clear, pink or blue, and a beautiful rainbow selection of our crystal butterflies & shapes. These have already been attached to bails so no fiddly plier work, and you’ve got a sturdy cotton thread to string these on. Finished off with a chunky screw clasp to tie on so you can make it to any length you like and enough elastic to whip up a matching bracelet – we’re so pleased with this one!

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Our kits come with full instructions to follow and so make an ideal gift for the budding jewellery making enthusiastic – no extra beads or tools are required, you get absolutely everything you need all packaged up beautifully.

You can grab one of these kits here. The difficult part is choosing which colour to start with…