Interchangeable Masterpiece!

While pondering what I should make for my monthly necklace project, I got an awesome bead package via Blue Moon Beads that contained their Amulet line of pendants, which are sold at Michael's. Inside this box was an overflow of awesome pendants, and to make things cooler, each pendant symbol had a small card that explained what exactly the symbol stood for. (That's always good.)

ANYWAY!

I saw this cool post on Pinterest about interchangeable earrings and figured I could easily do that with a necklace.

Basically, you create the necklace piece and instead of a bail clasp with a pendant, I added the hoop part of a Toggle Clasp. Then I connected the bar part of the Toggle to the pendant, thus creating a pendant that can be taken off and switched for another, depending on your mood. (I had two toggle clasps. One for the pendant and the other to actually use to put the necklace on)

For this project, I chose two pendants to interchange with; in reality, you can interchange with as many pendants as you want!

Pendant 1: The Lotus- The lotus flower basically represents holiness, good wishes, purity and positive energy.

Pendant 2: Yin-Yang: represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work.

Hope this project idea give you some inspiration. If you make one, let me know how it comes out!

Bitty Beads

 The possibility with seed beads are endless!
An opportunity to make a few pieces to give away as prizes in a decorating contest came up and I thought it would be so fun to give out a bracelet and earring set. And what better to make them with, than Blue Moon seed beads?

THREE STRANDED BRACELET
I found some colors that went well together: Gold, pearl and green. As you can see from the pictures, I dispersed the pearls between the green seed beads and added a lovely gold clasp.
This piece was so easy to make! Then I grabbed a few more pearls and whipped up simple but elegant earrings.
This took no time at all to make.

MEMORY WIRE BRACELET

If you have ever used memory wire, you know that you dont actually need a clasp for this kind, because it just wraps around your wrist. I found some fun beads in various shapes and sizes, again all from the bead box Blue Moon Beads sent me for being on their design team.

I strung them up randomly, because I find that looks best with memory wire and looped the ends, adding a bead dangle to make it a little cuter. Again, I took some of the same beads I had been already using and made simple earrings to match.

Anyways, the decorating contest went spledidly and my prizes were a hit! These seriously hardly took any time at all to make, so go ahead and give it a try.

Wooden Pendants

 Believe it or not, I haven't worked with a lot of wooden pendants before. I got sent a box of fantastic beads and there were a few wooden pendants in there, but I just set them aside, because I honestly wasn't sure what to do with them.

Finally, a few days ago, I thought I had better do something with them or they would forever become a part of my stash and never be used.

As I started working with them, I wondered why I had never bothered with them before! They're super cute and earthy.

For my first piece, I took a pendant with a golden leaf. It's a part of the Blue Moon Bead line.

Well then I found a cute clasp and thought it would be quirky to put it in front instead of behind.

Metal and wood actually go really well together, so I threw in some metallic beads, also by Blue Moon and created a unique necklace.




 For my second project, I found a fun wooden pendant with what looked to be a golden flower in the middle. Well, it was easy to see how I was inspired to make a fun piece!

I found some chain in my stash and also pulled some fun beads from Blue Moon Bead tin called Peanut Butter and Jelly. I hooked these up to eye pins and placed them in various places on the chain.

Then for my last step, I found what was originally a wooden pendant, but to me it looked like the perfect wooden clasp, so I slapped that on and Viola!

   

Find the nature lover in you and go make something with a cool wooden pendant!