making ice for my friends

Reading: making ice for my friends

07.02.2009

making ice for my friends

When my home skillet and I embarked on the process of wedding planning, one aspect we struggled with the most was how we were going to include and honor all of the friends we’d made during the various phases of our lives — high school, college, graduate school, and in the Real World — and not have an embarrassingly huge wedding party that made us look like over-indulgent thirty-somethings.

After agonizing for several weeks, our solution was ultimately not to have any wedding party, but to make sure that we would still let our friends all know how special they were to us without making them wear tulle and sateen in lovely shades of grass and mustard.

One day, a few months before the wedding, I found this do-it-yourself jewelry project while trolling for my daily dose of wedding porn on Elizabeth Anne Designs and decided to make each one of my girlfriends a necklace. Based on this design, I ordered the same jewelry findings from Jewelry Supply, as listed on her blog, except that I ordered a variety of colors for my sassy girlfriends.

To start this project, I suggest reading Elizabeth Anne’s blog post for how to obtain the necessary supplies. Her post isn’t super helpful on providing directions on how to actually assemble the necklaces, though, so that’s where I come in.

Get a squeeze-y tool. First, you’ll need pliers. I didn’t have pliers specifically for jewelry-making, and I didn’t buy any, since I’m still not sure if jewelry making is my thing. I think it’s really hard to make legit jewelry without knowing how to solder, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to venture into the worlds of iron forging and smelting, although if I did, I’d call myself a Jewelry Magnate, because I imagine people working with metals also to be Captains of Industry. Instead, I used some regular old needle-nosed pliers, like the ones pictured above.

Step one: make a hole in the hole. Using whatever pliers you choose to use, pry open the jump ring a tiny crack so that you can slide the jump ring onto the hole at the top of the vine pinch bail. Pinch the jump ring closed.

Step two: put your hole on the junk. Next, attach the vine pinch bail to the Swarovski crystal briolette. You can’t tell from the picture above, but the crystal comes pre-drilled with a long hole piercing through the top two sides of the tip of the tear drop shape. Use your pliers very carefully to widen the vine pinch bail and position the two sides on either side of the briolette’s holes. Using your pliers, clamp the vine pinch bail into place so that the bail rests in the briolette’s two tiny holes.

Step three: stick the chain on that junk. Lastly, thread the chain through the jump ring, and, bam, you’ve got a gorgeous necklace! And that’s the way we do it.

I also made accompanying jewelry boxes to hold each necklace. Using clear-top favor tins similar to the ones you can buy here, I popped out the clear plastic tops and traced them onto various Japanese washi papers that I already had laying around. I made sure to make my tracings slightly larger than the tops so that there would be some overhang.

I cut out each paper circle and positioned the washi paper over the clear top before popping the top back into the lid frame. The frame and the pressure from the clear top holds the paper in place, so no glue or tape is necessary.

Lastly, the week before my wedding, I wrote each girl a personal note telling them how much they meant to me. You know, no one ever warned me that before my wedding, I’d turn into a walking cheeseball. Oh, the tears I shed that week thinking about the laughs I’ve had with my friends. Who am I?

Oh, yeah. That’s right. This girl.P.S. For my Wills and Jacks, I ran out of ideas on what to make them, so I gifted them cookbooks filled with Charleston recipes. One day, after I become a Jewelry Magnate, I’ll weld them cufflinks. But until then, these will have to do.