DIY: Stick Necklace!

The inspiration for this piece is a little bit strange, haha. I was at the beach the other day and I saw these cool root / twig things growing in the sand which I thought would be awesome for weaving. So I pulled one out and weaved a little ring with it. Then I weaved a few more while chatting with some people. Then it got to the point where I had all these twig rings, so I decided to take them home and see if I could make a necklace with them - and here it is!

So if you're at the beach and you see these things...

...then get weaving! Well, if you're as fidgety as me and can't sit still in a natural environment without pulling things out of the ground. Haha.

Alright... time for some supplies! Gather them as above.

You'll also need a coil of wire for weaving your twig rings together later (I forgot to include that in the picture, my bad)

Note: Not all of these things are absolutely essential, just good to have. I did most of the weaving without using the jewellery pliers, but they do make it a lot easier!

First, here's how I made the twig rings:

Pretend this wire is a beach twig. Ideally the twigs should be flexible enough to bend like this without snapping. You could probably also use long grass (the sturdy kind), come to think of it!

When the beach twigs were wet from growing in the sand, they were nice and flexible and easy to shape. Then later after I'd made them into rings they dried out a bit and hardened, which is pretty good 'cause they've held shape nicely!

Anyway, step one is to loop it round like the above picture.

Then, thread one side into the loop you've made and pull it tight so you get the beginning of a wrapped-around effect like in the next picture.

Keep repeating this process with the same one side of your twig / wire, until you run out of length.

When you run out of length, start the same process with the other side of your twig / wire.

Voila! A little twig / wire / grass / other material ring. Yay!

And here were the bunch that I made at the beach while chatting.

Okay, so now that we're clear on how to make these rings, let's move on.

For the necklace:

Line up your rings in whatever shape you want your necklace to be, so you can get a bit of an idea what it will look like.

Luckily my rings were different sizes so this worked!

Next, grab that coil of wire we talked about earlier and use short lengths of it to secure your rings to one another (the way to do this is using the same weaving technique!)

The pliers come in handy for this part, because gripping and pulling wire through loops can be pretty tough.

The next couple of pictures show how I used the wire to secure the rings together.

Next, I wove my wire flowers in amongst the twigs. Again, this is the same weaving technique. The flowers are just bits of wire with a flower head at the top.

I also considered weaving some leaves and things into the twigs, but it was late at night and I was tired so I did what I needed to before bed, haha. Anyway, that's something I might do later!

The next step is attaching your string to the necklace piece.

First, cut two lengths of string as long as you want them to be (the longer the length you cut, the longer your necklace will be).

Then thread your needle and push it through the end of your clasp piece, like in the above picture. Once this is done, tie a double or triple knot to secure your string in place!

Repeat this process with your other length of string and your other clasp piece.