Beaded Wire Macrame Toggle Bars

Those of you who visit the AJE Component of the month blog hops may remember that my last COM design was incomplete because I'd made a bespoke bronze clasp and hadn't had time to fire it. Well, I still haven't fired it but I have managed to play around with some toggle bar ideas to go with it when it is fired.

 

Rather than use my usual hammered wire bars I wanted to try and come up with a design that carried the beaded element of my bracelet into the toggle bar so I decided to try the wire macrame technique I've used before for earrings. For my first attempt I use a spiral knot with the little etched beads featured in the necklace to create this bar and added a jump ring to the centre by which it can be attached to the bracelet. 

This works fine but I really wanted to see if I could include the connection loop within the bar itself so this time I formed a loop in the centre of the core wire and instead of knotting from end to end I attached the wire through the loop and knotted from the centre out.

This method takes a little bit longer but does create a slightly cleaner looking bar although personally I'd be happy to use either version.

Once the clasp is fired and patinated I think this will complete the design very well.

I have all sort of beads and components in my stash that could be used as clasps if they had a bar so I made a few more to see how they worked. For this one I used a square macrame knot and gently curved the bar when I finished knotting.

I think it makes a lovely focal closure for this beautiful ceramic element from Karen Totten.

For this ceramic link component by Marla James I used a spiral knot and teamed it with some lovely rustic faceted Czech glass beads to create an unusual clasp.

t

And finally, some simple seed beads add a little interest to a plain sheet bronze clasp - an idea that would translate easily to washers or large jump rings.

So it's really quite easy to add a little extra interest to your jewellery designs with a few beads and a length of wire. I'm sorry I didn't have time to write a complete tutorial for this post but I will do that as soon as I can and post it here and on my own blog.

Lesley

The Gossiping Goddess