Tutorial: Flowerrific Necklace with hints of Paris

Yay! I am back with a new tutorial. Stay tuned, because I actually have an important question to ask you guys at the end. I would ask now, but I'm SO PUMPED for this tutorial. I'm pretty proud of myself.

Today, we (or I) will be making this necklace as shown below. There are some closeups.

What you need:

• Sequins
  
• Eiffel Tower keychain. I got mine at Paris. Literally, 5 for a freaking euro. If you don't have this, just get some other pendant like thing or keychain you get from a touristy place.
  
• 2 pliers. It can be a combo, like plier and wrench. You just need 2 clampy things.


• Thread. I used black sewing thread


• Needle


• Necklace Chain


• Necklace clasp. I used a toggle kind. It's like a bar with a loop. Use whatever!


• Jumprings

Instructions

• First, take the keychain and split it apart. You see in my above picture with supplies that I broke it into the keychain thing, the pendant thing, and the middle "tag" that says paris/france on it. You'll need the pliers becuase this metal is very heavy and hard. If you have problems opening the loops, don't force it with your nails and one plier. Use 2. It gives you much more force.


• Now, take the pendant, and attach a jumpring. A jump ring is like a thin ring that's really easy to open and close. Attach this the jump ring to your pendant, then to the middle of the chain necklace. Make sure that this is a link chain necklace. It'll be easier to work with.





• You see the tag? Choose where you want to put it on the necklace. I chose the middle of a side. So assuming you want to put it there, just open a link on the chain, and attach the tag on. You might have to break some links off to make both sides of the necklace on.


• Attach the clasp. Are you still with me? Here is where we should be right now.






• Faaantastic. Assuming that you are at this point, congrats. You can leave right now and have a rockin' necklace. This is where it becomes a bit hairy and time consuming. I'm going to describe it in words. First, make a chain of sequins. You should have 3 sizes. Small, medium and large. Just find a bag of assorted sequins and separate them. You make a chain like so: First, take the needle and thread it. Don't tie a knot because it's not going to be useful. Put the sequin on the thread and leave a little tail. Now, put the needle through the sequin hole so that you have a loop. Don't tighten the loop! Now, pull the needle through the loop twice. Tighten and you have a knot.


• NOW, to make the chain of sequins. Thread another sequin on. Now push the needle through the "up" side of the previous sequin. Push the sequin up through the "under" side of the newly threaded sequin. Repeat. I usually like to do 10 in a chain


• Still with me? You are a brave lady you know. This part isn't really directable. I can give you a starting point, but it's mostly feel, go and improvisation. The sequin that you last sewed on is now "1". Everything else is 2, 3, etc in order. Take the needle and push it through the hole of sequin number 5. You should have a flower shape. If you are using faceted sequins, you should push the needle through the "bowl" side. This means that when you lay the sequin down, it looks like a bowl. Now, just curve all the sequins into a circle and sew it together.
  
• To make flowers, you can layer sequin circles of different sizes together to give different depths and such. Very cool. Now, just sew them on your chain however you like. I actually put two flowers back to back. Here's the picture of that. It's blurry, I know. If you need to, you can gorilla glue the flowers for added strength.
  

Yay! Do you guys like it? Now for my question. It's been a weird dream of mine (not like a DREAM dream, but more of a daydream) to actually open an Etsy store, just to see if I can get some more cash to pay for grossly expensive textbooks. Why are they 100 dollars each, I don't know. Yay for ebay and amazon! Anyway, back to the point. Do you guys think that I have enough talent to open one? How much would this kind of necklace be worth? To ladies who have etsy stores or ebay stores, how has it been running it? Any stories?

I'm not asking for flattery. I'm asking you ladies because we are essentially strangers. I like getting opinions from people I don't know becuase sometimes, I feel like its more honest you know? Since you don't know them, you usually don't feel obligated to say something not to hurt someone's feeling. I want constructive criticism!

Toodles!