Cross Stitched Pendants

This past Christmas, I made cross stitch pendants as gifts. I thought they could be used for necklaces, keychains or Christmas ornaments. I designed two patterns and used each pattern twice, using different color schemes.

Since the pendant was one inch in diameter, I wanted to have a finer stitch so there could be more detail in the design. I decided to use aida cloth that had about 26 stitches per inch (rather than the 14 stiches per inch that I’ve used in the past). The result: it took a lot longer to finish than I anticipated. But overall, it turned out fairly well.

Putting the finished cross stitch into the pendant also took some doing. I messed up the first time (which sucked). In the end, I cut out a chipboard circle that had a 0.875-inch diameter. I cut the cross stitch piece to a square (wider than one inch) and then trimmed the corners.

I placed the chipboard circle in the middle of the cross stitch piece and added book binding glue to the back of the chipboard circle and pressed the cloth edges around it. I applied glue to the pendant. Then I pressed the circle piece onto the pendant to adhere it to the glue. I tried my best to make sure the design was centered. It took some doing to get all the edges down within the pendent circle area; fingernails and tweezers helped to get the edges smoother.

I found cross stitching the designs to be fun and relaxing, but gluing the finished design was a bit stressful because if you mess up, you have to start all over (which happened).

The Almost DIY: Honeycomb Necklace

I like the hexagonal shape of hex nuts and thought I could form interesting shapes with them to create a pendant. And I did…but it also didn’t quite work the way I wanted it to. [Sigh.]

The Earring Pendant

Sometimes you just lose an earring; you come home and realize that at some point during the day, you lost it and have no clue of where it could be. You may try to check your home or car or office, but usually, it’s just a lost cause…it’s gone forever. When this happens, I always keep the lone earring I have left in the hopes that I can reuse it in some way.

A lone earring makes for a good charm or pendant for a necklace. My earrings tend to have hooks (rather than studs), so it’s pretty easy to disconnect the dangling part of the earring from the hook. And then I just reattach it to a chain and have a new piece of jewelry to wear.

In this necklace, the long metal rectangle piece used to be part of a set of earrings I had. I made a simple necklace using that earring piece as the main pendant that hangs from a bead, and decided to add a bit more visual interest by using two chains on either side of the pendant. I was glad I could find a way to use this lone earring in a new necklace that I like quite a bit.

DIY: Key Chain Pendant Necklace

I’ve mentioned that I went through a phase of getting Japanese key chains as souvenirs (that I inevitably never used). I don’t have much of a desire to use a key chain as an actual key chain because it adds unwanted weight and bulk, but I thought I could reuse a key chain by turning it into a necklace pendant.