Greenery Necklace Tutorial

Every year Pantone announces their color of the year in order to help manufacturers, designers, and suppliers across the world coordinate with each other in terms of trends, materials, and of course color combinations and palettes. This year, as you all might know, is about fresh greens and to be specific, the color greenery. This particular hue is a fresh yellow-green shade with a tinge of deepness that signifies prosperity, productivity, and positivity. Symbolizing nature to intends to revive, restore and renew. 

Green is considered a ‘hard to wear’ color in fashion as it does not lend itself well to either clothes or accessories. But it is a great color for jewellery. Even when used as a monochromatic array of tints, tones, and shades, green works on most skin tones and pairs well with colors like pink, red, black, offwhite, ecru, gold, and even yellow. Though there are several green gemstones like emerald, jade, period, malachite, etc., I love how green glass looks in the light. In this tutorial I have combined green glass briolette's with emerald green rounds, turquoise green ovals with and muted aventurine rounds to create a double strand asymmetrical necklace. As aventurine has the power to soothe the troubled spirit and bring inner peace it is widely used to reduce stress, develop confidence, and imagination, and improve prosperity.

This tutorial once again is based on the most used and simplest technique of jewellery making - that is stringing. It involves stringing two rows or rather two strands of beads together using beading wire and finishing the ends with crimps. Jump rings are further added to the closed ends to connect the clasp or hook and complete the necklace. This particular design is free flowing so I have used chain instead of full beads to keep the necklace light in weight.

Materials 

1. Round Beads Green Aventurine 5 mm 1 strand

2. Green Briolette Beads Flat Teardrops 1 strand

3. Glass Round Beads Green 3 mm 1 strand

4. Painted wooden copper barrel beads – 10

5. Turquoise green ovals - 2

6. link chain

7. Jump rings – 4

8. Lobster clasp

9. crimps – 8

10. Golden color Beading wire

    Tools – Nose pliers, wire cutters

Method

Outer Asymmetrical strand

1. Collect all the materials required for the strand and arrange the beads in the order you want to string them on a beading board. This saves time in making the necklace as the beads are very small in size.

2. Cut 22” of the beading wire and add 10 glass briolette beads in the center

3. Add 3 wooden copper color beads on either side.

4. On the left side add 15 dark green beads followed by one copper bead, one turquoise green oval, and one copper bead. Follow it up with 40 dark green beads

5. On the right side add 300 dark green beads followed by one copper bead, one turquoise green oval, and one copper bead. Follow it up with 24 dark green beads

6. Crimp both ends to individual jump rings. Crimping: Pass the extra 1” wire through the jump ring and back through the crimp and through the beads. Using nose pliers press the crimps flat to make sure that the hold on the wire is tight. Cut or tuck in the extra wire

Inner Symmetric strand – This is a shorter strand with beads and a brass link chain

1. Cut 15” of the beading wire and add 1 green glass briolette bead in the center

2. Add 1 aventurine bead, 1 briolette, 1 aventurine bead, and 1 briolette on either side of the center bead.

3. Add 28 aventurine beads on either side 

4. Cut two pieces of chain (7 cm each)

5. Crimp the bead strand to a piece of chain. Repeat on the other side. Cut or tuck in the excess wire

Assembling the necklace

Join both strands using jump rings on either side and connect a lobster clasp, further using jump rings. Your necklace is now complete.

Author Bio: Divya N is Fashion (apparel) and jewellery designer who has been teaching design since 2009. She has been interviewed by leading dailies, regional and national magazines, and websites, and has been featured on TV shows like ‘Oh my gold’ on TLC and in Interweave jewellery magazines. She creates for and runs the jewellery brand Sayuri and blogs at Jewelofsayuri.