How to Make a Graduated Pearl Statement Necklace with Austrian Crystal Pearls

SKU VID-1601
Designer: Kat Silvia
In this video you will learn how to string a necklace of beautiful Austrian crystal pearls in a graduated pattern for a classic and elegant look. You will see all the steps for how to string, crimp and finish your necklace.
Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Kat with beadaholique.com pearls and you can see that i have four different sizes here and this is the beautiful scarab based green so we have the 12 the 10 the 8 and the 6 so that's how we're gonna do our graduated pattern for today so again like I said this is the scarab a is green but we do have several other colors that I just wanted to point out to you in case you wanted to kind of explore the beautiful range of Swarovski crystal pearls so up here I have the iridescent the light blue the dark blue which is so beautiful and almost velvety we have the iridescent purple red and this is the lovely dove gray it's sort of a very subtle subtle gray it's almost white and then we have the iridescent Tahitian look pearl which is a beautiful teal and then this beautiful velvety chocolate brown so those are some of the other colors that you can pull together when you're doing going to make your necklace so I just wanted to kind of point that out to you as well so there's lots of options that we offer here at beadaholique.com alright so the supplies that you're going to need is of course your gonna need your pearls and then I wanted to add a little metallic element here so I'm actually going to use seed beads you could use metal beads as well but the Miyuki gold seed beads are a great alternative if you don't have metal beads and just want to add a little flash in there so we're going to be using those in the 11 o the rounds I have two bead Stoppers here that are going to help me out but for other supplies here what we're gonna need is we're gonna need some crimp tubes I have some thread and wire protectors here some crimp covers my box clasp and we're going to be using the 19 strand beadalon and this is in the gold color and it is the point zero one five so if you're looking to get this this is the ideal wire to use for this project and it has a nice beautiful gold color because we are going to see that just a little bit coming through so the only other tools besides your bead Stoppers that you'll need you'll need a pair of flush cutters and those are on four on one crimping pliers and then a ruler to help you out alright so if you have everything all set to go let's get started so we're gonna begin first by taking our ruler here and we are going to cut off about 24 inches of beading wire now this is going to make about a 17 inch necklace you can absolutely make it longer if you like and I'm going to show you how to do that as we get towards the end here alright so I'm just gonna clip that off and we can set our beading wire aside I'm just gonna cover it back up so it doesn't uncoil on me there we go alright and now we're done with our ruler so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take one bead stopper and I'm gonna place it a few inches from the end it doesn't need to be exact but we're ready to go and begin stringing all right so here's what I recommend I would recommend starting in the middle because if you're not sure how you want to graduate your necklace that's why we have our little bead stopper here so we can remove him and place him on the other side if we're not quite sure how we want to do it so what I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna start and I like to work in an odd number so I'm gonna start with my 12 millimeter beads and I'm gonna add three of them and I'm gonna add a little seed bead in between each of them so we're gonna start with one seed bead string on our 12 millimeter I had a seed bead string on my other 12 millimeter seed bead and one more and I'm gonna kind of drop that down to what will in essence be the center of my necklace there alright so adding on one more seed bead because we want to make sure that there's a nice little seed bead in between all of them what I'm going to do next is I'm going to do the same with the 10 millimeter to see how I like it so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to add three on this side and then I'll see if I want to add three on the other side but again just graduating that and I think working in odd numbers will give you a better result it just sort of works with the eye to give a center focal point so if you wanted to you could do five in the center if you wanted a bigger focal so you could do five of the twelve milimeter it's entirely up to you all right and straight down though making sure to get a seed bead in between each one all right so now what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna place a bead stopper on this side because I don't want to lose my beads I'm going to remove it from the other side and let's go ahead and just repeat that just to see how we like it and this is how you can adjust your necklace as you go if you decide that you want you know like I said if you want five or you want more it's entirely up to you but this is the best way to do and to achieve that nice graduated style all right I'm gonna end with one seed bead there all right I think that looks really nice it's a nice little graduation there so we have three of the twelve and then three of the ten on either side so let's go ahead and continue and I'll just keep on this side and I know I'm gonna move on to my eight millimeters and I think I'm going to try to see how it looks with five on each side here so we're just going to pick one up and you can see that the Miyuki seed beads are just adding a nice little metallic element there to the center just to give it a little bit of space to I also think it helps with the graduation your eye kind of gets to look at the scalloping of the design as opposed to all those little pearls sitting next to each other so just another little tip you don't have to you can also do this without the seed beads alright I'm going to place my bead stopper there I'm gonna move to the other side and remove my bead stopper that's why these things are so wonderful to use that way you can kind of keep going back and forth and just testing your design and seeing how it looks it makes the whole thing just nice and easy also if you wanted to you know at this point you could adjust to make it you know longer you could actually make a really lovely long long long necklace if you wanted to but I recommend when we do our sizing you're going to want to size with the six millimeters because that's where we're gonna use the most and one more on this side there we go alright how are we looking let's see oh that actually looks really nice so you see that it's just you're off by two millimeters every time but it's starting to really graduate so once you have this nice big focal here you start to really taper it off up there so I'm ready to move on to our six millimeter beads here so now we kind of are going to decide how long we want our necklace to be so you get plenty of six millimeters to play with so I've tested this out and for me I want a nice sort of color length necklace you know something that's a little bit tighter you know I don't want something too long so I think I'm gonna go for a 17 inch the smallest you'd probably want to go is maybe fifteen or sixteen but if you are giving this as a gift you can always instead of adding a box clasp you can use a necklace extender and then I'll give you about two inches so let's say you weren't sure if they wanted a sixteen or fourteen or an eighteen or you know kind of how they want it you can always extend it so you can make it 16 inches and then they can extend it up to 18 usually or you can make a really long one which is you know three four inches so it's entirely up to you all right so one thing I want to point out to you about the Swarovski pearls and you can kind of get in close on this is that one side has a little bit more of a kind of open lip there and actually let me try to see if I can pick this up so there's one side that's gonna be a little bit more open on the whole and you'll see this especially on the smaller beads because then the other side has a little bit of a smaller like it'll look a little bit smaller so sometimes this side is harder to string so you can go through the hole that looks a little bit open and it's just how they're coded and drilled once you get them onto the Strand you really don't notice that at all but just in case you are having a little trouble trying to string your beads I recommend trying to go through with this larger size like the larger side of the bead so just a little tip if you're having if you're having trouble once you get down to these six millimeters so because while this wire is pretty stiff it is still flexible so so exactly so sometimes it can be a little bit difficult just to string those those pearls on there alright so let's see where am I at so far one two three four five six seven eight and you can stop at any point and switch back to the other side to see how it's sort of laying you can also understand that from here if you wanted to add more of the eight millimeters you can kind of take these off and go back and add a few but that way you're not you know fully committed to it on either side this is why I recommend you don't start with trying to string all of your six millimeters and then get to your eight your 10 your 12 you know because then you might want to go back and adjust it as you're working so just keep that in mind as well that's why we do it this way that's why I suggest any time you're doing a graduated pattern that you kind of work simultaneously on both sides until you figured out the pattern that you want to do alright so I'm actually going to leave that there for just a second and I am gonna go to the other side I'm actually gonna flip it around just to make it a little bit easier on my stringing here we count and let's come over here and I'm gonna start on the six millimeters because I want to make sure it's balanced but see what we got and you don't have to use gold seed beads you can use a color let's say you wanted to add a purple or just you know maybe a black or something in here you can do that as well a blue would be very pretty as well or this one has a nice sort of green purpley quality to it so you could actually maybe even add maybe a dark red if you wanted to go for something that is a bit more Christmas themed so lots of options there but this is a nice classic design and a little modern twist on it with these Swarovski pearls and the little seed beads all right let's see where I'm at I think I have a ways to go yeah any more to go here to match it up you can just see that I can just kind of eyeball it now I just need two more so let's see what we got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 you know I'm gonna take one of these off here because I know that I want it to be 14 because I'm going for a 17 inch necklace so I'm gonna leave it and I'm gonna end it with one seed bead there and then I just need to add just a seed bead and one more and then I'll show you how we can finish it off so this is a really really kind of fast project all right so now I have my graduated necklace here I'm just gonna try to lay it out so you guys can see it there we go so it has a nice sort of round shape to it but it really does graduate nice and easy and it's just two millimeters in between each bead here for sizing so we did 14 5 3 3 3 5 14 all right so now we have finished with our seed bead here so we're gonna kind of scooch the long part of it out of the way here so what we want to do now is we're going to get our clasp involved so like I said we have some crimp tubes crimp covers some wire protectors and our clasp so what we're going to do first is we're going to string on one of our crimp tubes and we can slide that all the way down and then these are little wire protectors and they kind of look like little horseshoes so you just thread up through one side and then you're just gonna thread down through the other and it's just gonna sort of catch ups it's just gonna catch your wire and just go ahead and thread it down all right so you kind of have your little tube here and then it goes up and through the wire protector and you just pull snug and then it'll just fit nice but before we put this end through the crimp tube we're going to string it up through the loop of one of our of the section of our clasp and what we want to do is want to allow that horseshoe to kind of catch in there and then we're gonna string our wire down through the crimp tube now because this is the first side of our necklace we don't need to scooch our pearls that close yet because we want to be able to have room to get our tool in there the first side of doing a necklace like this is always easiest alright so I'm just winging it around there we go alright so we're coming in with our on foreign one crimpers we're going to use this little sort of arrow this little triangle pyramid side to crimp our crimp tube first and then we're going to rotate it and then we're going to do the other portion of the crimp so just to kind of get it in there I'm gonna set it in and sort of gently with my pliers they're just gonna crimp and it's gonna make a little V and then rotate it in the pliers and I'm going to move it to the second notch there because we're doing a two millimeter and we're just gonna crimp it down together and then we have our nice little crimp on our wire protector and the last part here is we're going to take one of our crimp covers place it into our little pliers there and this is where it's a four on one because this actually becomes a nice little chain nose plier and we're gonna get it around our crimp tube and crimp it over and just this is going to cover up that crimp tube this is a step you can do you do not have to add a crimp cover it just sort of adds a nice little finishing port to part to it so all I'm doing is sort of just crimping it around so that I get a nice little kind of little ball there alright so let's see if I can string this down through a couple of the beads you might not be able to those seed beads are small I can there we go so I'm just going to take the wire and go down through a bead or two and it looks like I can't get it through the Pearl so I'm just gonna leave it at the edge of that bead and then come in with my flush cutters getting nice and close and trim that off okay so that's the first part now all we're gonna do is just repeat that on the other side so now I can slide all of my beads down and I'm gonna come around to the other side here and remove my bead stopper and we're just going to repeat that whole thing on this side so again crimp tube our little horseshoe here pulling that down oops making sure it doesn't go through that crimp tube just yet because we haven't put on our clasp there we go so now we can pull it down a little bit tighter now we're going to take our wire and go through that clasp make sure it hooks on to our little horseshoe sorry this is a little fiddly all right and then down through the crimp tube and while we're here before we crimp it because we have a little extra slack and a little extra space I'm gonna try to get that wire through that seed bead like we did on the other side there we go alright so now leaving a little bit of room and this is why I suggest trying to leave the class but maybe clasp because you don't want it to be too stiff if you try to pull it straight you might end up with a necklace that won't curve nicely so this is sort of you know allowing that curve to happen because we want our beads to sort of lay naturally so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the same as we did on the other side come in with our crimper and we're just gonna crimp down on our crimp tube do the same little rotation there we go get our little seed bead out of the way they are glass so you don't want to get them in the way they could break crimp that and then we have another one of our crimp covers and now we're just going to cover that up and crimp around and you can come on the other side yeah I'm gonna trim this right now there we go just getting in my way all right and now we just want to make sure that that little bead has a nice closure to it so I'm just kind of crimping it from from all sides just to close it up there we go all right and there we have our beautiful graduated pearl necklace super fun and really easy this is a great gift if you're if you know someone really loves pearls this also looks beautiful in white as a nice little bridal necklace you can also do it and lots of the other colors as I mentioned before and this could actually be a bridesmaid's necklace too so any special occasion this is a wonderful design and please shop all of our beautiful Swarovski crystal pearls and all of these tools and supplies by heading over to beadaholique.com

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