Ocean-inspired jewelry is one of my favorite themes in fashion and accessories design. Starfish necklace design idea came to mind as soon as I started making new beaded starfish elements.
At first, I weaved several small starfish elements for the custom order bracelet. Many beading enthusiasts liked them and requested a pattern. When I published the Starfish beading tutorial for beaded starfish elements, I realized, it is a great tool for creating all kinds of sea-inspired accessories including earrings and necklaces. To me, the necklace is always a star of the jewelry set. And in this design of the necklace three “star” features are also starfish! Isn’t it cool?
To make this kind of necklace, you will obviously have to make two sizes of beaded starfish. This part is covered in my Starfish Pattern Tutorial. To be exact, you will need one big starfish and two small. Take longer pieces of thread for all of them, because you will need the extra thread for attaching the starfish elements to the necklace.
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Beads
- Freshwater pearls
- Faceted glass crystals of two colors – green and yellow, and two sizes
- Handcrafted glass beads
- Fire-polished Czech beads
- Seed beads (for the beaded starfish only)
Findings and Supplies
- The curved metal tubes in gold color
- Softflex wire to string on the beads. The reason I used it was because of the metal tubes
- Crimps and crimp covers
- Wire protectors
- The small chain with a chain link measuring 2mm – the same chain I used for earrings. Here I just added it to the pendant part to reflect the earring design and to create a connection between two parts of one jewelry set.
- A closed ring for the pendant
- I also used 5 mm open ring and lobster clasp
Starfish Necklace Design Idea
My Starfish necklace idea started with pairing the handmade glass beads with the seed beads I had on hand. All other beads just support the initial idea to have handmade glass beads and starfish. Very simple.
However, I often find ways to include pearls. Because I love them! (How many times I said that! Oh, my!)
After all the inclusions, I also wanted to have metal tubes, to make the necklace resemble the water movements. The tubes let me avoid using too many beads and making the design looking too heavy.
The faceted glass beads add little sparks to the necklace, and that is, too, reminds me of the surface of the water catching the sun.
There are only three basic colors in the design: yellow (gold), green and white.
Order of Steps
If you are interested in creating this necklace just the way I made it, you might find this order of steps helpful:
- Weave the center Starfish first and make a pendant, attaching the closed ring the way it will make possible to string it on the wire
- Then it is better to string all the beads on the Softflex wire (or stringing material of your choice)
- Finish the whole stringing part of the necklace
- Make small Starfish elements leaving the extra thread exiting one of the points of a starfish
- Carefully measure where are you going to attach the small starfish elements. They must be at the exact distance from the pendant Starfish.
I hope you like this necklace idea! Let me know, what elements of this idea did you use in your design? Have you come up with any other ideas, how to make jewelry with Starfish elements?
Happy beading!
