Thursday, November 25, 2010

Make a Glass Charm Necklace

We love glass and we especially love to take old cathedral glass and remake it, repurpose it and upcycle it into stunning jewelry. For this necklace, we used five pieces of broken, scrap glass in vibrant colors.

The necklace makes is dramatic and makes a wonderful clanking sound when worn.

Step 1
Cut the glass. We cut the glass using a 2-inch hole saw in our drill press. If you do not have access to a drill press or a hole saw, then you can use a glass cutter and either a glass hone or a glass grinder to shape the glass into a circle.

Step 2
Drill holes for findings. We drilled a hole in the top of each glass circle using a diamond tipped drill bit in our flex shaft. You can use any drill to drill glass (a flex shaft, a drill press a Dremel or even a hand drill). If you do not know how to drill glass, see our tutorial How to Drill Glass.

Step 3
Smooth and polish the edges. We fire polished the glass in our glass fusing kiln. If you do not have a kiln to fire polish cut glass, than you can use a diamond hone, diamond files and diamond coated sandpaper or sanding sponges to sand and then polish the glass. If you do not want to hand polish glass (and it is time consuming so we would not want to do so), then you can sand the edges enough so they are jewelry smooth and then etch the glass to create a mat finish. If you do not know how to etch glass, see our tutorial How to Acid Etch Glass.

Step 4
Make the findings. Rather than building a bail from wire, we made duplicates of the same "S" links we used to make the chain. If you do not know how to create an "S" link, see our tutorial Make Your Own "S" Clasp. The process of creating an "S" link to use as a finding is the same as making an "S" clasp.

Step 5
Attach the charms to the chain. We used a handmade chain that we made from 18-gauge round copper wire. We attached the charms by feeding one loop of the "S" link through the hole we drilled in step 2 and then affixing the charm to the chain using the other side of the "S" link. If you want to learn how to make an "S" chain, see our tutorial Make Your Own "S" Chain.

Further Reading
GlassWear: Glass in Contemporary Jewelry
Totally Twisted: Innovative Wirework & Art Glass Jewelry
Jewelry Upcycled!: Techniques and Projects for Reusing Metal, Plastic, Glass, Fiber, and Found Objects

Tools
SE Diamond Hole Saws 1/4" - 2 3/8"
Toyo Pistol Grip Glass Cutter
Glass Grinder - Glastar SuperStar II Grinder
Power Max II Glass Grinder - Glass Grinder
Stained Glass Glastar Allstar Grinder
Pro-Quality 20-Piece Diamond-Point Bit Set for Rotary Tool - Glass, Stone, Ceramic
DMT D2K 2.5-inch Dia-Sharp Diamond Mini-Hone Kit of C, F, E
SE 180mm Diamond File Set (5 Piece)
SE Diamond File Set - 12 Pc

Materials
Bare Copper Wire, Annealed, 1lb Spool, 18 AWG, 0.0403" Diameter, 195' Length 
Tarnish Resistant Copper Wire 18 Gauge 10 Yard (9.1m) Copper Color

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Day 5. Week 1. Jewelry from Found Objects.  $ spent: 0
New Jewelry a Day. Join the adventure.

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