Confessions of a Crystal Hoarder Blog

What’s your function? Hooking up strands and chain and designs. 

Thank you, Schoolhouse Rock, for reminding me that just like the English language, jewelry has a type of component that brings multiple parts together. This month our club boxes contained a selection of mutli-strand findings.

I wanted to try to use them, yes, as they are typically used, but also to experiment with these findings being the focal point of design, instead of just supporting cast.

As a warm-up I moved the connectors front and center for this silver-tone necklace using offset square beads from this month’s selection. Since the square beads had a lot of visual mass, I used our connectors with the single side down, so that I could add two chains to each side for support. I chose modernist chain that I picked up in one of the chain lots that crop up on the site from time to time. At this point my chain hoarding habit is starting to pay off… my chain was almost a perfect match for my connectors!

I road tested this necklace yesterday, and was pleased to find out that the double strand supports kept the central beads from flipping around while I wore it.

Using those connectors “upside-down” inspired be to use a more ornate pair for earrings. I happened to have 4 of these in my box- making it easy to produce earrings both connector down, and connector up. I glued partially drilled jet colored drops from my bead soup bag to wire for the dangler at the bottom. I used heavier chain for the reverse pair, and chose not to add anything additional.

Those earrings led to another pair where I had 4 of the same connector. This time I used the connectors as feature bars with two sahara squares I had in my collection. My goal was to set the square rings (is that possible, square rings?) so that they hang as squares- not diamonds! The bottom crystals are buttons on headpins.

I made this pair last month, but they didn't fit into the theme, but they look at home with the the gold bars, and they are connecting two strands (sort of) so...why not?

I only had one of these ornate 5 strand bar connectors, so I added brass stampings found in the box, plus some glass bicones from a past box, and glass sew-ons (item # 12668) to form some very ornate fringe! I added long, simple chain to make it flapper length. This simple brass chain is from the Hoard. It’s the perfect color for all those wonderful stampings. Stalk those chain lots people! They go quickly, and the chain is always fabulous.

My box contained beige and blue chevron beads, but I had pink on hand from a previous month. This bracelet, that was supposed to be simple, casual, and cool, took as much time to make, if not more, than anything else I tackled this month. I strung it four times before throwing my hands up and only using two colors for the fifth round.

The bead soup bag inspired a necklace using multi-strand connectors in a very conventional way. I added gold-toned beads from past boxes, extra long plated bugles, and others (item #8105) from my own stockpile. And just like June, It’s very