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Spiral Knot Leather Jewelry Lesson
1. Introduction to Spiral Designs with Leather Cord
Welcome to Beads, Bobbles and Jewels. I'm Katie Hacker, and today our feature is the spiral. It's an ancient symbol with many interpretations that work beautifully for your jewelry designs, like this necklace. Take a look at this black and white creation. I use printed leather, and even the pattern on the leather is kind of spiraling around, and I think it looks kind of zebra-ish. And I just love the way that it works with this pendant that is also sort of a spiral because it has that double circle. And I'm going to show you how to make this spiral knot. So, let's get started.
2. Preparing the Leather Cord for the Spiral Design
The first thing you'll want to do is take your channel component and measure it. And this is bolo cord. So, you might be familiar with this type of cord for making string ties, but I really love to incorporate it into my jewelry designs. So, you just lay it into the channel so that you can see how long to make it. And I like for the ends to be really flush, so I'm going to use either some very sharp scissors or a flush cutter. And you can just cut it so that the ends are overlapping a tiny bit. Now what you'll do is take it out, use a toothpick to apply a little bit of adhesive into the channel, and then press this leather cord back into the channel and just make sure that you can scoot it back so that your edges are nice and flush there inside the channel. You would do the same thing in the inner channel. This one I've already glued in place, and so you can hardly even tell where the seams meet because I just carefully pushed it in with my finger.
3. Choosing the Right Pendant
Now, this one is also a doughnut style of pendant with a big hole in the center. You could use something like this to create the very same type of necklace with your printed cord. This is five-millimeter round cord, so you just want to choose a pendant that has a large enough hole in the center.
4. Creating a Larks-head Knot with Leather Cord
And the first knot we're going to do is a Larks-head knot. You fold your cord in half and pass it through the middle of the pendant. Then you bring the cord in through that fold. This leather is so soft that you can really manipulate it, and you don't have to worry about straightening it all out or moistening it or anything like that. It's all ready to go. It's really nice and supple. So, what I will do is just turn this position it over the seam where my bolo cord meets inside the channels. And if you wanted to apply a little bit of glue under this knot, you could do that.
5. Making a Spiral Knot with Leather Cord
Now, to create the spiral knot, what you'll do is cut about six inches of your round leather cord. And of course, you could use any color. I chose black because it coordinates with my bullet cord. Now, the spiral knot is you can use it to hold things in place. You can also use it to create accents. So, what you do is just create a loose spiral around the original cords. And you can see I have the end of my cord tucked through there. You kind of have to adjust it as you go along so that you can get your knot in the right place. And depending on how big of a knot you want, you can go around multiple times around your center cords. And then you just feed the end through that coil that you've created and pull it tight. So, see, you've created a spiral.
6. Positioning the Spiral Knot
Now, you slide that into place at the top of the pendant here, and then you can add a drop of adhesive underneath, and you can push it on top. You want to make it tight so that it holds your pendant and prevents it from turning when you're wearing your necklace. So once your adhesive is dry, of course, you would just dab it here on the end. Then you can use your flush cutter to just cut away the excess. And that makes it really simple and quick. You can see how quick it was to make a necklace. You could make this today and wear it tonight.
7. Final Touches to the Leather Cord Necklace
Now, to finish it, what you'll do is choose cord ends that fit over the end. And like I mentioned, this is five millimeter. So, I would again, put my adhesive on the cord and then press this into place, then let it dry and you're ready to go. So you can cut this down or you can leave it the full length like that, and TADA, you're ready.
8. Exploring Other Styles
So, another idea is to use printed color cord. So, in this necklace here, I used a cord that matches with my stone pendant. And then I used the Khanza color, which is kind of a golden bronzy color of leather cord there to make the spiral knot. And you can see I added a few more coils around, so you would need a slightly longer piece of leather cord to create that spiral knot. But again, you have a really finished look that's very quick to make. And this necklace over here, I used the thinner leather cord on the necklace part of the to hang the pendant. But it's the same pendant idea at the center, just a smaller pendant with a single channel. And I put the bolo cord inside. Again, spiral knotting with that.
9. Creating an Adjustable Knot with Leather Cord
Now, a lot of people have been asking us about how to make an adjustable knot. So, here's what you do. Take your round leather cord and place it so that the ends of the cord are facing in opposite directions. Make a loop around the cord, past the end of the cord, through that loop, and make sure that that's extending toward the front of your necklace or bracelet. And you can pull that tight but you'll still be able to slide the cord through the knot. So here we go. I was holding it so when you hold the knot, you can see it's easy to adjust. So for the other end, you do the same thing. Make a loop around your cord and then place the end through so that it's facing the front of your piece. We'll pretend that my pendant is down here on the front of the piece and then pull this tight and then you can still slide it to adjust.
10. Attaching the Pendant with a Larks-head Knot
So let me show you again how to attach the pendant with the Larks-head knot. So here we have our adjustable cord knot at the end. To do the Larks-head knot, you just place the fold through the front of the pendant and then place the end of the necklace through that loop and you pull it tight. And you have a very simple doughnut necklace with your Lark Tide at the front and your adjustable knots at the back.
11. Adding Spiral Knot Accents
Now, if you wanted to add some fun accents here, you could do a spiral knot right above the doughnut. Or you could add spiral knots as accents along the length of the so.
12. A Closer Look at the Zebra Print Leather Necklace with Spiral Knot
Let's take one more look at the zebra print leather necklace, spiral knot, double circle pendant, and you can glue your end caps on and you're ready to go.
For more info visit: https://beadsbaublesandjewels.com/projects/1900_Series/1904/Beads_Baubles_and_Jewels_1904-1.htm
Type of leather used and link on LCU.com:
1m length of 5mm printed suede