How to Make a Crystal Pendant

Crystal pendants add sparkle to your wardrobe.

The sparkle, the shine, the beauty: make a crystal pendant to add to your jewelry collection!

Crystal beads are made from either glass or lead crystal, which are higher quality but also more expensive.

Often crystals have a finish called AB or Aurora Borealis on them. This AB finish gives a cloudy finish to several facets or sides of the crystal bead and makes the bead catch the light in different ways for more shine.

Things You'll Need

• Crystal beads
• Headpins
• Split rings and/or jump rings
• Jewelry tools: wire cutter, flat nose pliers, round nose pliers, split ring pliers

Instructions

1. 

   Gather your jewelry making supplies listed in the Things You'll Need section. Spread out all of your crystal beads to see what your possibilities are.

   Decide what design you like. This is the creative part of the process. To see what looks good to you, play with the crystal beads and findings. Findings are the metal pieces used in jewelry making, such as headpins, rings, and clasps.

2. 

   Use different metals for your findings, the headpins, split rings, and jump rings. Some of the choices include silver, gold, copper, and gunmetal finishes.

3. 

   Begin threading beads on a headpin. If you don't like how the crystals look, take them off and try another design.

   For this crystal pendant, I used a gold headpin and added a 4-mm pink bicone crystal, then a 6-mm clear bicone crystal bead, next a large square Swarovski cube bead, and topped it with another clear and then pink crystal.

4. 

   Bend the headpin at a 90-degree angle just above the beads using a flat nose pliers. This jewelry making technique is also good for making earring dangles and other accessories.

5. 

   Using your round nose pliers, make a loop (a circle) in the wire close to the beads. Bend the straight end of the headpin around the round nose pliers. Either wind the extra wire around the base of the loop or make a simple loop by crossing the wire in front of the loop.

   Cut the extra wire for a clean finish to the crystal pendant.

6. 

   Add a split ring to the loop. To save your thumbnail, use split ring pliers to open the split ring (it's like a little bitty key chain). You will be able to thread a necklace through the ring and interchange crystal pendants.

7. 

   Another option is to add a jump ring to the loop. Jump rings aren't as secure as split rings because the opening just meets on a jump ring whereas on a split ring, the metal overlaps and is much more secure.

   Open jump rings by moving one side of the metal back and the other forward. Never open them "out."

8. 

   To make another crystal pendant, I used a silver headpin and jump ring then alternated 4-mm bicone crystals and flat silver band beads with crystals in the side all around.

9. 

   For this crystal pendant, I used a gunmetal headpin and three split rings. On the headpin, I added a mix of 4-mm bicone crystal beads and a round vintage crystal bead in the center. Then I added three split rings to the top to make a longer dangle on this crystal pendant.

10. 

    To make another crystal pendant, I used a copper headpin and added small pink and purple bicone beads with a large vintage crystal bead in the center.

Tips & Warnings

• Get creative when you make crystal pendants. That's half the fun!

Resources

• Sybella Designs Etsy Shop