Finished Hematite Necklaces and Learing Knotting

With New Year's Day coming up, I got to thinking about glitzy jewelry the other night. I had my box of hematite beads out from the necklaces I made the other day, so I used hematite, silver and the Sterling Effects bead caps that remind me of marcasite jewelry, and a matching Sterling Effects focal in this necklace.

I also have a lot of hematite tube beads in that box, so I used dark gunmetal eye pins to link a bunch of them together in a chain, hung a little flower and vine charm with some hematite 'fringe' on it to make this necklace.

I've been putting off teaching myself how to use thread and knots in jewelry and today seemed like a good day to figure it out. I found some video tutorials on YouTube that were helpful - this one is the one that helped me the most:



I use Beadalon knotting pliers instead of tweezers, gripping handles works better for me than pinching tweezers. After some practicing, I decided to make a knotted necklace to go with an etched tab shell pendant I'd I purchased from Artbeads some time ago. The green beads are chrysoprase colored Czech glass druks, the brown beads are amber shell beads. For stringing and knotting, I used chestnut brown Gudebrod silk, size FFF. All I have left is to decide how to finish it.