Ebonnie

This is another birthday gift, this time for my friend Ebonnie. I love looking at my bead stash with a particular person in mind. It's a creative challenge not just to make something pretty, but to come up with something that suits that individual's personal style. I've been wanting to make some kind of tangly, multistrand piece for a while, but this is the first to make it to completion. I'm pretty happy with it. As usual, Grace likes it too. Let's just hope Ebonnie does also.

It did take longer than I expected to knot the strands. I thought I'd be saving time by not having to string so many beads, but I was mistaken. By the end I got into the rhythm though, and I think I could churn out a second one much more quickly. Attaching the clasp also posed some challenges. In the end, I knotted the five strands together and then used one of the longer tails to sew the whole thing on to each side of the clasp. I then tried to conceal the knot by wrapping it in the cord. The connection is a little bulkier than I'd like it to be, but I'm OK with that.

Materials: The waxed cotton cord is from the craft section at Wal-Mart. The wooden beads are from a friend who was clearing out her stash (thank you very much, Amy!). The (fake) coral nuggets and metal disks are from a thrift store necklace I purchased for 75 cents just so I could tear it apart. The clasp is antiqued goldtone toggle clasp, which I got at super discount from a JoAnn store that was going out of business. All totaled, this project cost less than $1.50, and probably took me about three or four hours (with some fumbling at first).