Making the Carnelian Beaded Necklace and Earrings

This bead project uses Carnelian gemstone beads, Swarovski pearls, Moonstone beads and antique gold plated pewter beads and findings to create a beautiful Y necklace with tassel and earrings.  Begin this project by first creating the tassel.  Using 24 gauge eye pins or 24 gauge wire, (please use the 24 gauge as a thicker wire may not easily pass through the gemstone bead holes) create a wrapped loop for your teardrop beads.  Continue to assemble as many looped teardrops as you'll need. For this project we used 5 for the necklace tassel and 1 for each of the earrings for a total of 7.   Next, you need to create the beaded clusters.  We made 5 of these, 3 for the necklace and 2 for the earrings.  For the clusters, you are simply sandwiching a 5mm Quad spacer between two 4mm Quad spacers, between two 3mm Quad spacer beads.  Once you've slid these beads on an eye pin, create a loop at the top and cut away any excess wire. Be careful when cutting wire and always use safety glasses.   Attach five 4mm gold filled jump rings (in a row like you are making a chain) to the loop of a beaded cluster. Then attach one teardrop component to each of the jump rings using 4mm jump rings.

Now that you have the tassel completed, you will to attach components to the opposite end/loop of the bead cluster.  What you do for one side of the necklace, you'll do for the other.  We started by attaching some Moonstone rectangle beads followed by a pewter beaded square link - you may choose either the square link or the circle link.  If you're working within a budget, skip the Moonstone beads and substitute 6mm Swarovski pearls in their place - you'll need these later for the project anyway.  If you choose to do this, pick up 4 additional bead caps to surround the pearls.   When working with the beaded square links, you'll need to use 5mm gold filled jump rings - the 4mm will not be large enough.  Then we created some different components using 6mm Swarovski pearls surrounded by 5mm bead caps and Carnelian rondells.  These were placed on an eye pin and a loop was created at the other end. You'll notice that some of the Carnelian components use the 4mm Swarovski pearls and 4mm Quad spacers to add some variety to the jewelry piece.  All you are doing now is attaching these components and using various pieces like the bead cluster, the square link and the pewter casbah round bead. This array of  beads and findings in antique gold give the piece it's character - choose your own to give your jewelry a personal touch.  Continue attaching components to each side of the necklace.  The nice thing about building a necklace this way is that you can easily see where the necklace will fall on you and you can make adjustment to the length as you work.  Once you've found the approximate length (allow for the size of the clasp), attach your clasp.  Here we've used the plated pewter hook and eye clasp.

The drop earrings are made using Carnelian teardrop beads.  Here we used one bead for each earring. You can choose to do this or attach a few of the teardrop beads to create a tassel effect or attach many on a long chain (you can use jump rings to create a chain) for a cascade effect.   When using only one teardrop bead, you want to try to match the size of the teardrop beads as close as possible so that the earrings dangle fairly evenly.  We attached these to one of the Antique Gold Plated Pewter Quad bead clusters that we created by following the directions above for making the clusters.  We then attached the clusters to gold filled lever back earrings using 4mm gold filled jump rings.

(this beading project assumes you already have pliers - if not, see our tools section)

Gold filled lever back earrings (1 pair)

Gold filled Jump Rings - 5mm (1 package)