Safari Necklace

This is a necklace I made for my mum. I had the beads for a while and wanted to make an all wooden necklace and I think my mum will like it.



The necklace has a simple but clever design as it can be worn very long or double up. It's long enough, even doubled up to be still comfortable.


Here you can see some of the beads in detail: I've included some of the lovely beads I bought recently from ebony and bayong wood, and also textured wooden saucers with a leopard pattern, little cubes with a pattern half leopard half tiger, long coconut tubes, and round flat coconut discs with a spiral pattern carved into it plus lots of wooden spacer beads in varying shades of brown.


Here you can see the brass clasp I made and that all the beads have been wrapped together to make sure the necklace is strong - especially if it gets a lot of handling by being doubled up.


The beautiful teardrop shape looked a bit lonely set against all the beads so I added the little vintage dragonfly. It really is teeny - the wingspan is just over 1cm.


I have some beads left over from the mix I put together to make this necklace so I might make another short necklace similar to this which will go in my Etsy shop.

The Sea in a Nutshell

My latest creation.

Funny things, names. This one started off with a starfish made from copper. Sea theme. So far so good. I made some pebbles (I thought) from off-cuts and texturised them and played with them using my new toys... Hmmm. After that they looked like little nutshells rather than pebbles. At which point I came up with the idea to call it "The Sea in a Nutshell". :-)


Above is a close-up of the starfish - cut out from copper sheet, textured, filed, torched to give it colour, shaped using my new toys, and finally filed and sanded again to make sure all the rough edges are gone. I've hung it from handmade large and small copper rings and a bayong wood ring I bought recently on Etsy. The bead you can also see on the picture is picture jasper in a lovely very pale blue-green with black and brown flecks.

Above is the "dangle" that goes through the wood ring to close the lariat. The lariat is infinitely adjustable, on a slim neck it will go round twice.

At the front of the picture you can see the lovely ceramic bead I swapped with Toby from Natural Attril and a little handmade (by me) copper fish. You can also see my 'nutshells', some lovely pale blue wooden beads (from my London trip), a star limpet shell, a ring top cowrie shell and some seeds strung in a circle.

Above is shown part of the actual "chain", strung with coconut spiral beads, another cowrie shell, bayong wood bead (disc), a round redwood bead, lovely ebony wood beads and a spotted horn bead, and some seeds that have been turned into beads. To add more texture I've also added bits of chain.

Above is another close up of the wooden ring and some of the beads on the chain.


I am really pleased with how this turned out. It's fluid, it's organic and has lots of texture and it really is 'the sea in a nutshell'. Hope you like it too. Available soon in my Etsy shop.

All the ebony, redwood and bayong wood beads are from this Etsy Shop: e & e bungalow.