Posting Bail

No, this has nothing to do with prison, but there are chains involved! Earlier this evening, I met with several friends to celebrate the birthday of a member of our loose collective. My gift was primarily an assortment of snacks and a (literal) gag gift of tinned kippered herring,* but another part of my present was a necklace I made.

The recipient is a gardening enthusiast with an interest in everything from flowers to fungi, so I chose a glass mushroom bead as a pendant, and strung several moss-colored glass beads with silvery spacers on a strand of beading wire. In the center, I used a special kind of bead called a bail. In this case, it is a metal ring with concave surfaces to better nestle between beads and a small loop for wire or a jump ring to hold a pendant. Many other options exist for different applications, but this was perfect for my purposes because I could use a head pin to support the mushroom bead and then twist a quick loop for the bail.

If you want a quick necklace option, bail beads can be an easy and effective way to suspend charms or beaded pendants from beading wire, chain, or cord. When selecting a bail, consider overall design, the diameter of its hole, the size of its loop, and the orientation of its loop. In this case, the bail is designed to nestle between round beads, and while the holes in the bail and green beads were large enough for thin leather cord, I elected to use wire because I wanted to use those specific spacer beads in between. I could have hooked the wire loop I made through the small loop on the bail, but I decided to add a small jump ring in between for more flexibility. The orientation of the loop did not matter because the mushroom does not have a specific front side, and the loop I made in the wire is not fixed to it anyway. If you are using a charm or pendant with a fixed attachment point, however, it helps if the bail loop and the pendant loop are oriented the same way so a jump ring connecting them maintains the front facing outward without any twisting.

Of course, a string of beads on a wire does not make a necklace on its own, so I used some bulk chain and a springring clasp to complete the piece. I chose to limit the length of the beaded portion due to the weight of large glass beads. A thicker chain can better support a heavier necklace, but it's still weight. Every design is a balancing act between these factors.

Have you tried making your own jewelry? If you are interested, but haven't taken the leap yet, what questions do you have, and what techniques do you want to learn? I suggest searching YouTube or other video hosting sites for how-to guides, and Fire Mountain Gems offers a wealth of articles. I can also offer the occasional tip, too, so feel free to ask in a comment below!

*And for the record, I like kippered herring, but she gags at the very idea after I made her try it years ago. There's no accounting for taste!