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Necklace Closures (basic)

Perhaps the easiest necklace closure you can make with polymer clay - a ball & loop closure. All you need is a little clay, some glue and whatever stringing material (e.g. buna, cotton, decoy cords).

Ball: roll a little ball, make a hole using a needle or small rod. Loop collar: roll out a rod bead, making one end a little wider than the other since one end will need to hold two cord thicknesses. Bake both pieces, Use glue to attach the cording into the clay. Make sure to test the loop size before committing to glue!

  Click on the image to really see all this photo has to show. You'll see different types of necklace closures and connectors. The key to "closure thinking" is to remember that between whatever you string the necklace with and a closure, there needs to a "bridge", a couple few bits or pieces that actually connect each end of the stringing material to each connector half. The best thing to connect the spring connector to the closure is a jump ring.

You can buy nice closures and connectors at most bead and arts & crafts stores. For your more signature pieces, however, a closure designed by your hand really makes a professional statement.

  A necklace closure consisting of buna cord to spring connector to jump ring to circle&bar closure pair. Push the buna cord as far into the open end of the spring connector and use pliers to pinch the last coil to make it grab the buna. Use a jump ring to connect the spring to the circle/bar closure.

You can find closures, spring connectors and jump rings at most bead stores. Click here to see the finished necklace.
 

  I made my own simple closures and connectors with a little copper wire curled into '8s', some polymer clay and round nose pliers. You can see the finished necklace if you click on the above photo.

The stringing material of this necklace is cotton cord. I rolled the clay into those bullet shapes, using a small knit needle to open the inside large enough to hold the cotton cord, embedded copper wire into the other end and baked the clay.

After baking, I dabbed the ends of the cord with glue and jammed the ends into the bullets.

Have a great polymer clay time.. ;-)

Desiree

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Last update to this page: 2 Jul 03. Send comments, questions or suggestions to Desiree McCrorey.