The Twinery: January Project

Updated February 1, 2011 to include a Video Tutorial!
Click HERE or scroll down to watch it within the post.

It's time for my January Design Team Project for The Twinery! This is a Valentine necklace and I thought these would be so much fun to make for the little girls in my life. The way I usually come up with colour combinations is for them to accidentally come together and the way that most often happens is with my ink pads. When I put them away or pull them out and stack them, I'm usually surprised by how pretty certain colours look together and this was one of those times. As it happened, The Twinery offers baker's twine in these same colours!

First, I assembled all my supplies which are the twine (of course!), buttons (or other embellishment), paper (or other medium), stamps, punches, adhesive and scissors. Then I cut three feet of twine in Pink Sorbet, Mandarin and Lemondrop. I figured two feet was enough but it's important to leave slack for loops and knots. It's better to have more than to come up short in the end! I pulled my inks and started stamping various hearts in two sizes in each of the three colours. This is how they looked before assembly.

Here they've been paired up and holes have been punched for the buttons and twine to be threaded through them.

Having designed jewellery and hair accessories before, I knew I wanted a sort of accent at the ends so I created knots and threaded pink buttons back-to-back with the Mandarin and Lemondrop twine, leaving the Pink Sorbet free in the centre. I tied another knot to enclose the pairing and started threading the hearts.

With each heart pairing, I added a button in the colour that was not represented in the hearts and used the corresponding twine colour to hold the trio in place. One by one, all colours are represented and in a sequential order. It may look random but it's not! The other two colours of twine not threaded through remain aligned at the back since they are all used every third heart. After seven sets of hearts are attached, I created the same knot-button-knot sequence to finish.

To create a clasp, I attached a larger button to one end and a duffle coat loop to the other.

Since these necklaces are going to preschool girls, I made sure there was no chance of any of these buttons coming loose, hence the design of this necklace. The edges of the hearts are also smooth and will not cause paper cuts of any sort. I can count on that with Gina K Designs' 120lb pure luxury cardstock!

All the pink buttons are from my local dollar store which was an incredible find since they are so unique.

Here's the back view where you can see that the entire necklace is one continuous strand.

And one last look at the finished necklace. :)

Here's a quick video tutorial if you'd like to try this for yourself! :)

Have you seen the new colours at The Twinery? There's a baby pink called Blossom, a black called Charcoal and a pale chartreuse green called Honeydew. They are beautiful and sure to become your new staples! There's a big giveaway on The Twinery Blog through Saturday, January 29th and the code NEWCOLORS will get you 25% off your entire order through Sunday, January 30th!

Enjoy your weekend!!!

Sources: GinaK 120lb pure luxury White cardstock; Papertrey Ink Heart Prints; SU Rose Red, Tangerine Tango & Summer Sun inks; EK Success Large and Medium Heart punches; Marvy-Uchida 1/8" long reach circle punch; The Twinery baker's twine in Pink Sorbet, Mandarin & Lemondrop; Basic Grey buttons (orange and yellow); Forever in Time buttons (pink); Papertrey Ink buttons (yellow)