DIY: Upcycled Necklace

Here is a SUPER easy project you can do with any jewellery that needs freshening up. It literally took me 15 minutes from start to finish!

Before I had my son, I wore a lot of jewellery and especially necklaces. If you are a mother, you will know necklaces + baby = chaos! So up until fairly recently I haven't been wearing a lot of my stash! I also used to wear a lot of different necklaces at work, but once we switched to a uniform, I couldn't really wear them anymore. 

I have three storage places for my jewellery! (Eeek!) My wooden jewellery box that my sister bought for me when I turned 21; a mug tree that I hang necklaces I wear often on; and a behind the door storage keeper that I put things in a don't wear often. The behind the door one is also usually covered by jackets and coats!

Anyway, this particular necklace I really love, and obviously I wore it a lot. It has become quite tarnished over time, and because of this I've stopped wearing it, thinking that I need to get a new chain to put it on. Given that it's not an expensive one, I think it's actually lasted pretty well! What I like most is all the different trinkets and elements it has to it, and the colours mean it seems to go with everything. 

I've been meaning to do something with it for ages, but it wasn't until I went to Spotlight the other day to get some wool, I decided to do something about it. I knew it would be fairly difficult to get another chain the same colour, so I went with a simple black one. It's a 1 metre chain and cost $5.99 (I think). I had looked online, but it was easier for me just to buy something ready made and good to go. 

The first thing to do, is remove all the beads and trinkets from the old necklace. I have dabbled in a bit of jewellery making before, so I've got a few tools that are perfect for this. I think a pair of small regular needle nose pliers will do the trick, but as this is a bit fiddly, you do want to use something quite small. I mostly use the pink ones on the far left and the little green ones. 

Once all the beads are taken off, you can decide how you want to arrange them. I decided to use the circular wooden piece as my centrepiece and go out from there. There were also a couple of pieces that were a bit too tarnished so I decided not to include them. I put the circle on first, choosing the link in the chain that was the very centre. Then I gradually adding in each of the other elements, checking how they looked each time. 

You can see in this pic in the top left there's a couple of things I left off. But once I was adding the beads back on to the chain, I actually added one of those back in!

And here is the finished "new" necklace!

I like that it's not 100 percent symmetrical, and that the wear and tear on some of the pieces adds to that vintage look. I know I'm going to get a lot more wear out of this necklace now!