Plum Beadacious: Vintage Inspired Beaded ID Lanyards

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Vintage Inspired Beaded ID Lanyards

Vintage Inspired Jewelry is a Favorite of Mine

I have been inspired by vintage type of jewelry ever since I first started using Etsy back in 2006. I emulated much of what I saw to make earrings and then necklaces. Now I specialize in creating and selling id badge lanyards. I was missing... no, I was aching, to make vintage inspired jewelry again. So I thought, why can't I create vintage inspired id badge lanyards.

Antiqued brass findings are often used in this type of jewelry, and heaven knows I sure have a lot of those in my stash of supplies. I decided to make a lanyard using some of the antiqued brass findings and some beautiful blue green glass teardrop beads. I also incorporated some small complementary crystals up around the neck. I am delighted with what I did here. I plan to do more in the future.

Here is a close up view of the teardrop beads with the antiqued brass beadcaps. Notice how I layered two fancy beadcaps, then a crystal, then a small spacer above the teardrop bead. This adds charm to the design. You can also see that I used a small round antiqued brass bead at the bottom of the teardrop bead. The beads are wirewrapped with antiqued brass wire to the antiqued brass chain.

Since vintage inspired jewelry has a lot of embellishment, I added small crystal beads and small round antiqued brass beads further up the strand to repeat the colors and forms used on the main beads. The lovely antiqued brass mother son chain adds to the charm of the design. I enjoy mother son chain because it uses large and small links of chain in a pleasing repetition.

Vintage Inspired Lanyards Sold in the Past

I have made some vintage inspired lanyards in the past, and those are sold. Here are some photos of them. If you find that you are interested in something like these, please contact me for a custom order.