How to make flashy flower necklace shown in galler

[Austin Rios]

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could please help me with a necklace project. I am trying to create the flowers shown in the gallery under the necklace title Flashy Flower Necklace. I am a bit new to jewlery design so any help that you could provide would be much appreciated. Thanks guys.

Fa'iz

[Russ Nobbs]

Welcome to our forum!  

I've looked closely at these outrageous styles at shows in the US and in shops in Hong Kong and I'm going to have to refer this to Polly or Rita to try to answer next week. I know Rita experimented with several ways of wire wrapping behind the big beads before she got the finished products you see.

Both of them are very busy trying to get pictures of several new stones on our website so it might be a few days. We are adding "apple green" turquoise (sometimes sold as Mojave Turquoise), Ruby Quartz (a big hit from the last road tour), Purple Imperial jasper and some other goodies and I don't want to interrupt them.

For the lurkers out there, this design is in the necklace/bracelet section at http://www.rings-things.com/gallery/index.html It really IS flashy!

[marym]

Hi Austin... I happened to have this necklace in front of me when I came across your question.  Let me see if I can adequately describe this intricate design.

First step is stringing your choice of rounds, two strands, then finish your ends.  It looks like Rita (our creator in question) first 'built' the petal portions of the flowers by creatively using round silver wire.  The petals are not in actually 'attached' to any portion of the necklace, but instead is "held" in place by the center bead, which is attached to the actual strands.  For example... if you look closely at the pink flower, you'll see that the petals are all strung on one piece of wire, shaped to mimic a flower.  Both ends of the wire were then twisted to look like a stem and finally secured under a butterfly bead.  That set of petals was then attached to the necklace by using the center bead.  This is only one round bead, and one head pin twisted in a traditional manner and attached to both strands of the beadalon.  The bead you choose as the center of the flower will need to be bigger than the remaining hole that you will have in the center of your petals for this method to work properly.

Of course the bigger flowers are a little more intricate with the wire wrapping techniques, however, they do use the same premise.  The petals are designed first, then attached using the center beads as the stem that holds it all in place.  One thing to note: there really is no wrong way to wire wrap, as long as the end result is what you want, and the wires won't poke the wearer.  My suggestion would be to start with smaller flowers then work your way up to bigger ones.  

Hope this helps.  Have fun and let us know if you need anything else.


Mary
Rings & Things Staff

[Russ Nobbs]

I hate to send people to another forum but there is a great thread about these fancy flower necklaces in te Bead and Button magazine fourm.  It has links to some wonderful designs from a Brazilian artist living now in LA and links to both free and for a fee tutorials on making these necklaces. It's in the "Work you admire and other discoveries" section at B&B forum.

http://www.beadandbutton.com/bnb....ID=3250

The pay-before-you-learn tutorials are at http://www.oken3d.com/jewelry/technique.html
The free tutorial for briolette flowers is at http://www.deviantart.com/view/6562030/