Making a necklace is easy. Just put the beads on the string.
Making a good necklace however is difficult. Here is a series of pointers I hope will help.
Let's talk about beads--technically you can use any beads to make a necklace, but here are some considerations:
Will it Touch the Skin of the Neck--Necks are sensitive parts of the body, so let's not use spiky beads on the part that touches them. Anything uncomfortable to the touch of lips or face should probably not be on the upper part of a necklace or on a choker. I've notice that crystal bicone beads can be particularly painful. Be careful out there.
Weight--When I first started beading I would go nuts and try to use all the cool beads I had on ONE SUPER AWESOME MEGA NECKLACE. As you might imagine, these necklaces turned out to be extremely heavy to the point that sometimes they made my neck feel tired at the end of the day. Learn from my mistakes.
Strands--You don't have to make a necklace of just one strand, you know. But if you do decide to make one of multiple strands, you will have to take care to make sure they all look good together and hang attractively. I make the rabbit necklace a long time ago. It had a patterned beaded bead and a really cool carved carnelian rabbit that lost one of his ears recently. I took care to make sure the two intertwined strands had just the right amount of length not so sag oddly.
Hole size--Beads come in all sizes and the hole in the bead can be a major issue if it's not the same size as that of the other beads in the necklace. Frequently you might put a bead on a necklace and it actually falls over and covers another bead next to it due to it being a larger-holed bead. Beads that have too small a hole size won't fit on the cord you're using, whereas beads with too large a hole size can flop from side to side so they look weird and uneven.
So pay attention to this factor when choosing beads for your necklace. Stone beads in particular tend to have smaller holes than others, and the smallest holes are found in pearls and gemstones, so be sure to pre-check that these beads with fit on your chosen cord before you start creating to avoid a disappointing experience.
If you just have to use a lot of beads with different-sized holes in your work though, I will cover how to do that in the next blog post.
Blessings on you and your work,
--Pam