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advent gifts

Day 7: A Crystal Ruffle - a diy ribbon necklace

This necklace came about because I didn’t like how the plastic crystal beads were looking as I attached them to this ribbon. I had something else in my mind entirely. Playing around with it resulted in my ruffling the ribbon, the same way you would fabric, pulling the basting thread and voila! I made this as a necklace but I think it would make a cool bracelet or headband as well. Since the ribbon ends are just loose, you can do just that and play with it. Fun!
I originally made the necklace in yellow, but liked the green after I took photos for the tutorial.

I created all this jewelry in a mad frenzy over the course of three evenings. I didn’t want to stop to take photos of making, so I’ve ended up re-doing most of the pieces for the tutorials- usually wanting to try a different color to see how it looks. I love them both.

For all the other jewelry tutorials from this month, check out 24 Days of Glam page here.

Materials:
Apprx 14" of plastic crystal bead trim
Apprx 40" of 3/8" ribbon
Time: 30 minutes

Start your thread approximately 14" along your piece of ribbon. I catch the end underneath my stitch a few times so I can trim the end and its secure.

Secure the first bead in the string to the middle of the ribbon. Stitch this approximately three times.

Proceed to stitch every fifth bead to the ribbon from there, just once. You want the beads to lay nicely along the ribbon, not too taut or too loose. There is some lee-way here so don’t worry about it too much.

The back should look like this.

After you attach your 14" or so of beads, it should look like this below. Leave your length of thread loose for now. If you want a shorter ruffled piece, apply fewer beads. If you want a longer ruffle piece apply more. Maybe do the entire necklace of ruffle – might have to try that! Or, for a tighter ruffle, you could do every third bead instead of fifth, and see how it looks.

Now you want to grab your loose thread and start pulling it.

The ribbon should start to ruffle together like this.

You won’t be able to pull the whole thing through tightly like above. There will be too much tension on the thread. Scoot the ruffle out along the length of the thread, like this. And then pull some more.

Keep that process going until the ruffle is as tight as it can get.

Finish off your thread, by pulling the end through a stitch, keeping tension on the ruffle thread to make sure the ruffle remains tight.

Finished off it should look something like this, but don’t cut the thread yet. You want to hide the end and arrange the ribbon a bit so its oriented the right way.
Do this by going through the ribbon again, and then back again through the ruffle. Finish thread off inside the ruffle so it can’t be seen. Trim the end on your starting side as well.

Finis!

Now, tomorrow you’ll get some very sparkly barrettes. Perfect for that dressy holiday outfit!

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