The alLUREing necklace tutorial

I am not a fisher woman.

And while I have been fishing a couple of times,
I wouldn't know where to begin if I had to buy a lure in order to catch a fish!

How did I decide on a fishing lure necklace?

Well, I saw a necklace made from "wobblers" in a book.

It was bright and colorful and looked fun.

I also needed to make a thank you gift for a friend and I didn't want a traditional gift!

So....I went to Walmart to look for "wobblers". They didn't have any.

Granted, I don't know what a "wobbler" looked like, but I didn't see anything named as such.

If we lived in a big city where there are sporting goods stores and the like,
I might have found what I was looking for, but we don't.
And given that improvise is my middle name.

And that I was just looking for good colors,

I settled on these fine lures.

And of course a chain (well 2 really), some jump rings.

I already had beads and the silver straight pin type things you put beads on.

Okay.. now for the tutorial!

1.Your cute little jewelry tools will NOT work for this project! I had to go dig out my husbands cutters and needle nose pliers. The hooks are HARD to cut off!

2. After trying a number of different ways to cut off the hook, I finally settled on cutting open the end the hook was placed on and not the hook itself. The picture below shows this. (once you cut open the end, you can pull off the twisted piece if you want. I tried to just untwist the wire, but I couldn't without hooking my finger on one of the THREE hooks! OUCH!)

3. Now the fun part!! After you take off all the hooks, decide on the beads you want to use and make the ends of the lures pretty!  I used the opening that I cut open and then just closed it around the bead addition.

4. After the lures were finished, (I used 4 of two different kinds and 1 larger one) I got my 2 chains and made them into one necklace about 28" long (not sure on length.. original was 22" plus a portion of the second to make it long enough to be able to put over your head).

5. I put the largest lure on first. I used two jump rings on each lure. Two reasons.. first I hate that many "custom" or "homemade" necklaces fall apart so easily and I wanted to make sure that the lures would stay on the necklace. Second, I liked how it looked. :)

6. I placed the lures on every fifth ring. No reason. I just liked the open four between each lure. Because they are pretty big, I didn't want them sitting right on top of each other.

 7. And there you have it! The finished necklace!

I'm not sure if the necklace is very practical, but it sure was fun to make.

I'm going to be on the look out for some "wobblers" and maybe make a couple more gifts!