DIY Chain and Ribbon Woven Necklaces

A couple of Christmases ago, I received a chain link necklace with crown charm. The necklace really wasn’t to my tastes. It had a Juicy Couture-ish appeal and I got a thing against brands that stick their label on the hinny area of gym pants. I decided to throw away the charm but keep the perfectly good chain. It was a bit boring on its own so I wanted to find a different pendant but it needed to be hefty pendant with a large hole in order to hang in on the chain. Of course I didn’t own such a pendant. Instead, I soon forgot about it and the necklace stayed in my jewelry case gathering dust.

Inspiration

A few weeks ago, Gilt was selling woven ribbon necklaces by Lulu Frost. The chain was interwoven with brightly colored satin ribbon and tied with bows. They were adorable and inspired me to finally do something funky and chic with my chain necklace.

The Supplies

A chain necklace
Colorful ribbon that is at least twice as long as the chain
A bit of tape

Instructions

1) Taper one end of the ribbon with the tape. This will make the ribbon easier to weave in between the links.

2) Take the chain necklace and pull the ribbon through the first link. Make sure to pull enough of the ribbon through. I recommend at least the necklace and a half length of ribbon.

3) Begin weaving the ribbon into a pattern. To do this I straightened out the chain so the first link lies flat, the second link is on its side, and the rest of the links alternate in that pattern. I threaded the ribbon from bottom to up for the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc links and the right to left for the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc links. Of course you can also choose to weave randomly but I liked the braid-like weave my pattern created.


4) Threading the ribbon is a bit tedious so I actually stopped about 1/3 the way through. I tied the ends of the ribbon into a bow and closed the necklace clasp so it created a double chained necklace. If you do this too, make sure to leave the ribbon long enough so the necklace can go over your head. You wouldn’t want to tie and untie the necklace every time you wear it!

5) Or you can also weave the ribbon through the entire length of the necklace to get something more like Lula Frost.

6) I kept mine simple, but you can add brooches, charms, feathers, and gems to it as well.