I love a mixture of stone beads! When you string a handful of different types together you can put together a wonderful mixture of colors, and you can also mix a small number of more expensive stones in with less expensive ones to help keep your costs down. I really love turquoise, and mixing it with serpentine, chalk turquoise, and amazonite really enhanced the rich green blue of my stones.
I decided to string them on C-Lon cord so that it would be a lighter weight necklace where each stone could be admired individually.
Materials and Tools
3 pieces of green C-Lon cord, 80” each
Antiqued copper 3-holed end bar and clasp with chain
Fray check
GS Hypo-tube cement
12-16 each of 5 different types of stone beads. I used the following:
14 serpentine rectangles, 14x10mm
14 chalk turquoise cubes, 8mm
13 amazonite rondelles, 8x5mm
16 amazonite rounds, 4mm
13 turquoise ovals, 12x9mm
14 open hex copper beads, 8x3mm
17 8/0 bronze seed beads
Tools:
Scissors
Tweezers
Measuring tape
1. Fold each of the long stands of C-Lon in half and string each through a loop on one half of the clasp assembly. Knot each doubled strand and slide the knot up tight against the loop with your tweezers.
2. Add the beads randomly to each strand, aiming for a pleasing mix of colors and sizes. Stagger the placement, and leave about an inch or so between each bead, knotting before and after each to hold them in place. Double the knots if needed to keep larger holed beads from slipping. Spread the copper and bronze beads throughout the piece as accents.
3. At the end, thread the cords by pairs through the loops on the other half of the clasp assembly. Tie a knot around the necklace strands and pull snugly. Glue your knots with the cement, and trim them when the cement has thoroughly dried.
This post contains affiliate links: Beadaholique
Copyright 2010 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.
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