One of the best things about having girlfriends who are creative is that they “get” you. They know that giving you a handmade gift (whether they made it or not) will make you squeal with delight. And squeal is just what I did when I opened a package from my friend Jenny of Craft Test Dummies that contained 3 handmade polymer clay pieces.

And I’m not the squealing kind.

I’m more of a tomboy like that. But I digress.

I was so thrilled that she thought of me when she saw these on etsy and while I don’t own a lot of yellow it didn’t take long at all for me to decide how these pieces should be used.

The earrings were easy. I simply switched out the silver findings for the antique bronze and I got right to work on the necklace.

I knew I wanted to have a global vibe.

So I went digging in my bead stash and came up with; Czech glass beads that included small flat circles as well as the multi colored small ones. Plus a few leftovers from various projects.

The findings – chains, jump rings, eyepins and toggle clasp all come from Blue Moon Beads.

Of course this is a multi-strand necklace. Now that I think about it… I can’t think of the last necklace I made that was only one strand.

There I go with that MORE is BETTER aesthetic again.

Anyway, for the first strand, I created segments on antique brass eyepins. Some have one large bead and others have three of the small Czech class beads. I created two separate chains like this and connected them to the pendant with three jump rings.

The second strand is strung on beading wire. Use bead stops at the ends to hold everything on the wire until you are ready to assemble all three strands.

You can see that this third strand is asymmetrical. I used the Blue Moon Beads curb chain and attached a jump ring and a double length of smaller curb chain.

And now to put it all together!

Attache all three strands to either end of the toggle clasp. Crimp beads for the strung strand and jump rings for the other two.

I think this is might be my favorite piece I’ve made all summer, definitely on my top 5 for the whole year, and I’ve worn it a lot.  After all, it goes with almost anything!