A springtime necklace

I made this necklace last spring. I'd seen pictures of wire-wrapped pendants and wanted to have a go at it, so I tried winding my 0.4mm wire around my 0.8mm wire. It was quite hard to get the long end of wire through the heart shape without kinking it, so I found it easier to cut the 0.4mm wire into several sections. After that was done, I wanted the heart outline to be a bit thicker, so I went round again with another lot of 0.4mm wire, but this time added small purple seed beads, which were supposed to be like buds on a branch in springtime. Then I hung the pendant on a necklace made of beads of different sizes, to give the sort of bobbly effect I was looking for. In the far right of this picture you can just about see a lovely purple lampworked bead; I added in two of these for extra bobbliness.
  
Shortly after I made this necklace, I visited my youngest sister and her husband over Easter-time. It was wonderful to spend time with them. They are both such loving people and they are so incredibly generous and kind. The colours of the beads make me think of the trees that were all around their house then, heavy with pink blossom.

However. It has to be admitted that there were certain practical problems with this necklace. The first one was that it turned out that having a massive silver heart pendant hanging round my neck did somewhat limit the opportunities for wearing it. When I was trying to look serious, it just didn't seem right somehow. Also, I kept accidentally spiking my son when I picked him up and cuddled him, which seemed a shame. Another practical problem was that I only thought of adding a clasp after I'd crimped the loops in the beading wire at both ends, and so I had to attach the clasp using a jump-ring. But the beading wire was so thin that it kept popping out of the gap in the jump-ring, so that the necklace had a habit of suddenly undoing itself when you were least expecting it. This was inconvenient. I tried to fix this by adding extra wire-wrapping next to the clasp, but instead of the intended rustic effect this just looked untidy.

Ten months on, with a bit more practice at making necklaces, I have decided to re-string this one, without its pendant, so that I'd be able to wear it more often. It is now much improved - longer and swingier and with a few more lampwork beads dotted along it - and with a nice gunmetal-type clasp which complements the grey foiled beads, rather than the silver-plated one it had had before, which had been a bit overly shiny for the gentle colours of the beads.

It is good to be able to take things apart and put them back again even better.