Day 21- Another Day, Another Necklace (Of Contact Tips: Part II)

3/20/14

I was out all day today which called for a smaller project when I got home tonight. I hadn't had the chance to clean up from my copper extravaganza yesterday, so I sat down and started meddling with the pieces, in particular the wider contact tips I hadn't yet used. I also cut a few pieces from a long piece of rubber tubing.

Playing around with the components I noticed that the caps fit nicely and snugly into the ends of the tubing. I decided to use them as plugs and fill the tubes with Swarovski crystal beads. (No, they are not sponsoring the myriads of projects in which I've used their product, but they did sponsor a project I was involved with several years ago and now I have lots of leftovers!)

Stringing the contact tip with copper wire and a crystal to hold it in place. 

Using the contact tip as a plug.

I put together three pieces of tubing decreasing in size, filled them with crystal and closed up the ends with the contact tips. I used Swarovski glass pearls to fill in the exposed side of the contact tip in the same copper color, and added loops to the end so I could attach jump rings.

I put handmade copper jumprings on each piece and connected them with links of elongated copper chain. I used the same chain to make the length of the necklace. I think this piece would also look very nice with a black leather cord and I might end up buying some to change it out.

Necklace: copper, rubber, Swarovski crystal

Here you can see the glass pearls used to fill the contact tips

Loving the modern edge of this piece! I also really enjoy using crystal as a texture rather than a bead. I think it's my favorite jewelry piece I've made so far for Create30.
xo,
Arielle

PS- This item is now available for sale in my Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/SalkinAccessories