How To Make Your Own Original Necklace

Have you ever thought about creating your own personalised jewellery. Perhaps you played with beads when you were a child but have never touched them since. Necklaces particularly are very easy to create and with some
ingenuity can look either funky or elegant and appropriate in both cases to the rest of the outfit you are wearing.

First let us decide what to make the necklace from. You can buy semiprecious stones such as jade, amber or other semiprecious jewels already polished and with holes in them ready to string. Or you can obtain raw stones and put more work in yourself. If you live near the sea, or go on holiday there, you can wander along the shore and look for stones, you will be surprised at the attractiveness and variety, although you are unlikely to find anything truly valuable. However, this sort of jewellery is not about value, it’s about looks that complement your outfit.

The next step is to polish your stones. This will take some time. You start with an abrasive  to get the basic shape and take the roughness off and gradually polish with softer abrasives and cloths until you finally get the finish you want. It does not pay to hurry this process, the longer you spend at this, the better the final jewel will be.

Now you will want to make holes in your stones so that you may string them together.  Many tools are available for this - the miniature drills used by model makers are the most obvious. Line your beads up before drilling them so that you know exactly where to drill and again take care. Having invested all the time and effort into polishing your stones, it would be foolish to break or scratch them at this stage.

Stringing your beads is the next step. Jewellers thread is probably the best for this, although other threads could also be employed. Be careful, though, sewing cotton and the like will be too soft and will break and fishing line is to hard and may cut its way through your beads - and your neck if you are not careful. Make sure you place the beads exactly as you want them before tying the thread. You can place them a number of times before finishing the knot, but once that knot is tied it will be difficult to change without starting over with a new piece of thread.

With some creativity and time it is possible to make some really personalised articles of jewellery. I know somebody who pierced orange pips to make a necklace - it looks great. Try carving and polishing small pieces of coal, it looks just like jet, with little or no cost. It won't last long, but jewellery like this is not meant to last forever.