Jewelry Making: How to Make Leaf Charm Necklace

Jewelry Making: How to Make Leaf Charm Necklace - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Hi my name is Tracy Howarth I am with Brooklyn Charm, I am going to show you how to make yoursel a charm necklace today. We are going to start off with picking out our chain to match with our focal piece, which today I have chosen a metalized leaf. It is a real leaf turned into metal. Here I have different options of chains I can choose from. What is nice is to lay out the different metals and chains next to the pendant to decide which chain goes best. Holding it up against the materials is the best way to visualize which chain goes with the pendant. I decided to make a necklace for myself with this gun metal chain which matches nicely with the copper leaf pendant that I picked out. So, this is a 5 foot piece, I am going to cut it down to about 18 or 24 inches depending on how long I want the pendant. One way to really sort of figure where you want to is to hold it, sort of remember there that is where you want it to be. I can take my chain and then hold position that there. So I am going to take my wire cutters to cut the chain, the extra I do not want. I have these little jump rings laid out here. I am going to use my tools to open the jump rings up. I am going to slide it into the chain, and also into the clasp. Use my tools to close the jump ring, make sure my clasp is working. Now I am going to put my other jump ring, a little bit bigger, and stronger one, to be the catch for the clasp. Again using my tools is combination to open and shut it. The nice thing about this big copper pendant is that is has a big bail, so it is very easy, I can just slide my jump ring right through the big hole. Instantly I have a necklace. I do want to add a little color to it, make myself a little charm necklace. So over here I have some natural stones, it is good to sort of see what colors goes best, and I think the turquoise is a nice complimentary color for the pendant. So similar to what I did to put the clasp on, I am taking the jump rings and opening them up with the 2 tools that I have in combination with each other. I am sliding it through the center part of the charm and I am just going to let it losely move around on the chain so I am not actually fixing it to the chain just so that it can slide around. So, in that action I have added a cute little color to my necklace.