How to Make the Selkie Necklace in Gold Featuring Cultured Sea Glass Beads

SKU VID-1671
Designer: Alexandra Smith
In this video, you will see from start to finish how to make this necklace using cultured sea glass and metal beads on Beadalon stringing wire. You will see how to string the beads in the order shown, as well as how to attach a clasp using crimp beads, thread protectors, and crimp bead covers. For this project, you will be using a pastel color palette with gold accents.
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Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi this is Alexandra at beadaholique to make the selkie necklace featuring cultured sea glass beads so this finished piece was so much fun to put together this is just a small assortment of so many different styles and colors we have of this beautiful cultured sea glass and what we're going to do in this video is create sort of a pastel version with gold accents and so for that I'll be using these four millimeter pink and purple beads along with some of these beautiful sort of luminous clear chips I've got some beautiful aqua blue drops and these four millimeter turkish spacers for class theirs is 15 millimeter lobster clasp with a six millimeter jump ring got a couple of thread thread protectors crimp beads and covers and for tools we'll be using the flush cutters and chain nose pliers some crimping pliers I've got a bead stopper here to help me with my work and we'll be stringing on this beadalon 19 strand bead stringing wire so to begin what I'll do is cut 26 inches of that 26 all right use my flush cutters to trim that off now I'm gonna take my bead stopper and attach it kind of midway through the piece and what I like to do is start at the center of a necklace and then design outwards so even though will be fairly closely replicating this piece I'm still going to start at the center and I'll begin by spacing my blue drops with one of each of these turkish spacer beads and then pretty curious to see how this colorway turns out I did not pre string it to see whether I would like it as much as this other sort of bright contrasting color way with the yellow and the Aqua I came up with and it's always fun to figure out the variations down to my last couple of drops here add on one more metal spacer and let's bring those down and see how they fall so that's sort of a neat elegant look I like the texture that those turkish spacers add now what I'm going to start is bring in these four millimeter rounds and you'll notice that I've pre-strung them onto some beading wire and that's for the ease of use of pulling off six at a time which is the number that I designated in my design and then I can string them all at once rather than one one bead by bead so that speeds up my process a little bit and let's see let's make sure I got that two four six yeah six beads measures fairly close to one inch and I didn't really mean for that to happen but it's just how it turned out so now I'm gonna add on to these spacers following my pattern and the other necklace and as I bring on these chips again it's going to be about a one-inch measurement but it varies depending on the size and shape of these irregular sort of organic chip shapes so I'll just choose a variety of thicknesses and widths to see what I like the look of ooh that's looking really nice okay let me add a couple more and I'll hold it up to the ruler and we'll see how how far we are here let me bring this down that looks just about right that's about an inch so now in my pattern I'm going to add on two more spacer beads and six more of the pink slide that was all through I could have stood to use a slightly thicker beading wire this is what I had on hand in the in the workspace and it's it's definitely strong enough so that's not the issue it's just very very flexible and soft and that's fine all right so now I'm going to start in where I've spaced the yellows in my other design I'm going to do purple in this one and this will be a one by one as I put them between gold spacers my hands not getting in the way I'll try to move around this direction here and you can see as I add these spacers between the glass beads that it it desaturates which is kind of a nice variation in the design you count how many I did one two three again at six beads so I'll keep going the metal beads are a great way to break up and frame other beads in straight strung pieces got a really nice accent alright so this is my last purple bead there we go and now in my pattern I'm going to go back to the pink grab six of those slide those on and now in my pattern I have two more of these spacers and then some more chips I'm calling these chips they may be referred to as Nuggets but I think when they are a thinner like this they need to look more chip like to me they really remind me of more the found glass look that you might actually see on the beach these are tumbled and called cultured cultured sea glass I just really enjoy working with these sort of natural looking organic components so again I'm gonna hold this up to my ruler against an inch two inch mark and see what we've got that looks it looks about right so on go to more of my gold spacers and now in my pattern I have six more pink sliding on and from here I've got one spacer going on with six more purple and that's going to do it for this side so I've completed the first half of my necklace they pull this up so you can see how that's turning out very nice so what I'll do is string up the second side the very same way and then we'll add the clasp by crimping it on and using the crimp covers and the beat the string protectors sorry so I'll be back with you in just a few minutes so now that I've completed stringing all my beads I see that it turned out really neat I like how these textured spacers add a totally different look and really make a neat accent to these beautiful pastels so you'll see that I took off my my stopper my bead stopper and I'm going to reinsert that at the end of my necklace on one side that will keep my beads from falling off when I take up the other end here and we're gonna start the crimping process so let me take on one of these crimping beads it's a two millimeter gold-plated bead also going to string on my thread protector let me go through the tube on one side also going to come through the tube on the other side and that will cut my cord really securely there before I do anything else I want to string the end loop of my clasp on and that's gonna go right up inside of the loop of that thread protector so now I'm ready to put the end of my bead stringing wire through my crimp bead in the other direction and pull the crimping bead up just like so I'm also going to take my with my fingers and just pinch the two sides of that thread protector so that it meets up with the diameter of the crimping bead so now with my crimping pliers I'm gonna go in to this second trough that innermost trough of the tool and I'm going to squeeze down and crease that bead then I'm gonna come in to the second trough at the tip of the tool in the opposite direction and fold that crease over so now I've got my bead crease with my clasp on there I'm gonna clip the extra with my flush cutter and I'm ready to take on my throat three millimeter crimp bead cover so I'm gonna tuck that on just like so not two millimeter bead fits really well in there I've got my flat plier and I'm just gently gonna squeeze down on that all different angles to get that round bead to close over the crimp and hide it good that went really smoothly hmm all right so let's go over to the other side we're gonna do the same thing to put on our jump ring again I'm gonna slide on my crimping bead go through my thread protector back through the other side of it here's where it gets a little tricky to make sure that you get your tension right because you don't want a bunch of space flopping around extra cord for your beads and sometimes the crimping bead will sneak up on the tube of the thread protector but I got it there I'm gonna string on my jump ring make sure that lands inside the loop of the thread protector and now take my remainder of my strength beading cord and come through the crimping bead and try to stay out of my own way here while I get the extra stringing wire out get my tension right and again I'm going to squeeze the edges of that thread protector close closer together and ready to crimp just pull my wire a little more go into the rear trough make sure that's centered there we go squeeze the bead and crease it come into the front trough and fold it over dextra and once again I'm going to take up my little crimping cover here slide my crimping bead inside and squeeze it shut I want to try not to have my pliers slide over the metal because that might scratch it a little bit that's why I come at different angles to squeeze that closed evenly hmm there we go great so now we have two of the same necklace that just looks so very different because of the the colors and textures and I also think it's interesting these spacers are four millimeter where as these he-she nuggets are five millimeter and yet these are so striking because of the texture so I hope you enjoyed this video you can find all of these beads tools and supplies at beadaholique.com and please also subscribe to our YouTube channel for all the latest updates thanks for watching

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