to create this necklace you will need:

• round nose pliers
• wire cutters (mine are conveniently built into my pliers)
• THIN gold wire, mine was 24 gauge. the thinner the better if you’re just learning to wire-wrap
• slightly thicker gold wire, 18 or 20 gauge
• swarovski crystal beads – mine were the bicone (also called tapered) shape in a variety of colors i bought a long time ago from rio grande. they were really assorted sizes and have a lot of sparkle, but you can use whatever beads you like at the time.
• gold clasp
• two gold rings
• briolettes or other drop-style beads to dangle inside the rings
• ruler

Begin by deciding how long you want your necklace to be. I followed the Anthro version pretty closely, so I aimed for 31″ long from clasp to clasp. (This is what the ruler is for.) Once you decide how long you want it, you can begin making the chain.

Take a piece of the 24 ga. wire, about 3″ long. Curl one end around your round nose pliers like this.

With your pliers, hold the loop you just made and use your fingers to wrap the short tail around the longer piece of wire to secure it. Trim the excess short tail with your clippers.

Add a bead and straighten the loop so that the remaining wire sticks out straight from the loop center and not at an angle.

Loop the other end of the wire the same way you just did. You should end up with something like this. This will be 1 “beaded link” for your necklace.

Cut another 3″ piece of the 24 gauge wire. (If you want to cut a bunch of them in advance so you don’t have to keep clipping as you go, it’s helpful.) Put the end of this piece of wire through one of the loops of the beaded link you just made.

Make a loop with this end and wrap it, just like you did on both ends of the beaded link. This will connect the new piece of wire to your first beaded link.

Put a bead on the wire and close this link with a wrapped loop.

Continue adding beaded links until you have a length of about 10″. For me, this was 24 beaded links.

This is when you add your first gold ring! The rings I used had a really cool hammered texture but were open (meaning they didn’t make a complete circle, they had a tiny space.) So that the beaded links wouldn’t slide through and my necklace wouldn’t fall apart, I wrapped a little wire around the opening. You would be better off using a solid closed ring though.

With a 3″ piece of 24, link your last beaded link to the gold ring. Make a wrapped loop, put on a bead, and make another, slightly larger wrapped loop closing the gold ring inside.

Take one of your drop/briolette beads and cut a 5″ piece of 24. String the wire through the bead and then  put it through the larger wrapped loop you just made to connect the beaded link to the gold ring.

Make a loop like this then wrap it closed.

Bring the other end around to keep the bead from falling off, then wrap both ends of the wire around the bead, making a little cap like this.

The bead will then dangle inside the gold ring like this!

Connect the gold ring to another beaded link, like you did earlier. This will suspend the gold ring between two lengths of beaded links.

Continue making beaded links until your chain is 18″ longer. This was 42 beaded links for me, but it depends on how big your beads are and how big you make your wrapped loops.

The second gold ring is a pendant that slides freely around the chain. To make this, I wrapped the gold ring with 24 wire again so that it wouldn’t open unexpectedly. I then used a 5″ piece of my thicker wire to make a large wrapped loop, like this.

DON’T WORRY if it isn’t “perfect.” this necklace is all about the beauty of imperfection.
Like you did with the other ring, connect a drop bead and wrap it so the top looks capped. Do this 3-5 times. They will dangle inside the ring.

Slide the pendant onto your long chain of beaded links. On each end of the chain, you will attach half of the gold clasp. Do this by making wrapped loops with the thicker wire, like you did for the beaded links, only don’t use a bead.

Unless you want to.

Done!
Merry Christmas Eve!