making necklaces and watching The Princess Bride

Obviously those two things go together.  Well, kind of...

A few years ago, I saw this tutorial from love Maegan, a fashion blogger.  I had to make my own version.  I put on The Princess Bride - the best movie of all time - and just started playing around.

I started with a few supplies - easy and cheap.  Maegan's roses were black, but I wanted more of a deep red/wine color.  I got one of the cheap bunches from a craft store that comes with roses in different sizes.  I'm sure this would be beautiful with fancier silk flowers, but they will be a little more well made and harder to manipulate.  I bought some organza (thin, sheer fabric, like tulle) and ribbon in the same color, a bit of thick cotton for the base of the necklace, and some snaps and d-rings for construction.

I started with the big flowers and took off the plastic stems.  A few of the big flowers had centers that looked kind of cheap, so I took those petals out and kind of twisted up the remaining flower to look less like a fake rose.

I sewed these onto the cotton I'd cut into an appropriate shape.  I googled "bib necklace", which was pretty popular at the time, and looked to see how wide and deep it should be.  I left the middle in the fabric, even though I meant to end with a horseshoe shape, not a half-circle - this left me with a little lee-way to mess around with the flowers.

Now, the mid-construction pictures were weirdly fuzzy, so I'll leave them out.  Sorry!  But, if you look at the picture below, you can tell I just placed the flowers close to each other, squished them in empty spots and sewed them securely to the cotton base.

After getting a basic shape I liked, I cut away the extra fabric and then used the ribbon to attach the d-rings at the ends of my necklace.  Then, I took the tulle and cut it into little squares and rubbed the edges to fray them a bit.  I folded them up into cone shapes and sewed them into the gaps of the necklace, giving it all a bit more texture. (FYI, these middle pictures have some weird lighting.  The color of the necklace is much truer in the first and last photos.)

While using the ribbon and the snaps to finish off the roses, I realized I picked out ribbon with wire edges.  This is great if you're forming a bow and need to adjust the ribbon to create a perfect loop.  If you want something to hang flat, you should use regular ribbon.

Late night bathroom mirror pictures!  Classy, huh?  Not really, but the necklace is adorable.  That camera was old, but it's probably better at late night craft documenting than my iPhone.