Ocean Wonders

Ocean Wonders, focal piece

This necklace took a bit longer to make than I thought it would. I’ve gotten used to making things that go together pretty quickly, so it took a bit of mental focus to get this one done. I love it though. I wear it all the time and I have gotten quite a few compliments on it.

Supplies: I used the swarovski pearls. They are easy to find, they are very uniform in appearance and they aren’t too spendy. The seed beads were easy easy enough to find, although I did go for different colors. Looking at the photo in the book, mine are a slightly different shape. I found quite a few really gorgeous shell pendents but I was surprised by how expensive they are. I looked at some in the $14-$19 range and decided that was just too much to spend. I found this one at Fire Mountain. I ordered more than 15 things, so I got it for $6.05, that was a considerable savings over the others. I then chose the color of my seed beads to go with it. I couldn’t find pearls for the bail that I liked, so I opted for larger seed beads for that. I did have silver toggle clasps that I could have used but I am loving copper at the moment so I went with that. The design calls for a pewter toggle clasp. They used a starfish toggle, it goes nicely with the name of the necklace .

Assembly: This took a little bit of patience on my part. I still don’t feel like I have a lot of experience with the smaller beads. I am sure that I am a bit pokier than I need to be. It was slower going than I expected, but I have to say the technique is very simple. It was a very easy necklace to assemble.

This design is another one out of the “Pearl” book in the “Create Jewelry” series. The book is by Marlene Blessing and Jamie Hogsett. Instructions for this design start on page 93. I have to say that I have made more things out this design book than any other book I own. I Really want to make the peach pearl necklace with the turquoise nuggets but I am having trouble finding the right pendant.