Bird Nest Necklace: First Attempt

Last night, I tried my hand at making a wired wrapped "bird nest necklace," using the tutorial from Lisa's Craft Blog.  I saw this tutorial a couple days ago and thought it would not only be a nice challenge for someone who is just beginning to work with wire, but also a lovely gift for my friend over at My Handmade Wedding.

This is how my first attempt (the prototype I'm keeping) turned out!

The tutorial has you use only one kind of wire, but I always have to try to do something different apparently. I used two colors of wire: 22 guage silver plates and 24 gauge gold tone. The two colors together make it work with different chains and makes the nest seem to shimmer more!  It was quite a bit more work though and I did stab myself in my thumb, but there is this idea that art sometimes requires a bit of sacrifice (or a bit of blood).  I didn't mind.

Here's a bit of back story:  If you go to My Handmade Wedding, you'll see her theme is laid back but very sweet, based on her cake toppers, which are little blue birds. Her invites and gift tags have hand drawn birds on them, and her accent color seems to lean towards the color of blue of her cake toppers.  My friend purchased necklaces from me for her helpers (who are similar to the standard bridesmaids) and for the mothers of the bride and groom, but I really wanted to make her some jewelry as a gift too (whether she chose to wear it or not).  The dress she was originally going to use was best without jewelry, so we set that idea aside.  She found a different dress (which is very lovely and very "her") and I found the tutorial for the 'bird nest necklace."  When I showed her pictures of this style on Etsy, she seemed very excited by it.  The birds nest necklace would fit the theme (and the style of her "hippie wedding dress") very well.



She is leaning towards an antique gold tone, which will be a little difficult with the wire selections the craft stores have around here, as well as one of my online resources.  I'll check a bit further online.  One idea I had was to make her birds nest two tone using gold tone an brown wires or to simply stick to one of those two.  The chain would still be antigued gold tone, so the nest colors would be affected by which hue of antigued gold I go with (different companies sometimes have different hues for this).  The "eggs" in the nest will hopefully be the blue of her wedding theme, I just need to find some.

I'm also considering what other directions I can take these necklaces...  I could do other, more mythical or fantasy based nest ideas.  I'm also thinking of showing my oldest niece how to make them, since she works with wires more than I do and it could be a good way of stretching her creative muscles.  I think this could be fun.