The above photo is the final product. I am obsessed with vintage beaded necklaces. Commonly made Hong Kong (like the one above), Japan, or West Germany Circa 50s - 70s. They come in shockingly variable color and size and either glass or plastic. This one in particular, I believe, the oddly shaped orange and white swirl are lucite, which is an older plastic, and it does glow a bit under blacklight.
Some of the original beads were plastic with an orange paint that had chipped, cracked, and almost altogether peeled off in some places, as you can see with the image to the left and below. I decided that I wanted to keep it 3 strands so, I decided to replace the beads with Round Faceted AB Crystals that I had salvaged from another vintage piece.
I used BeadSmith S-Lon TEX210 medium weight white bead string and it was the perfect fit! I didn't need to use a beading needle or anything, just the string. The trickiest part was getting the knot at the end tight without any slack. That job was done by using my EZ knotting tool. I am so happy I was able to save this gorgeous piece! I love the way the crystals sparkle! The other complicated bit was the fact that it is 3 strands of varying length so I made sure that I took photos of the necklace that I could refer back to and had to be so very careful not to lose any of the beads. My first attempt, I added way too many beads to the longest strand, and it came out like below.
As you can see the last strand is just way too long for my taste and it does not capture the vintage essence that I was going for. I decided to restring it again to shorten. I really made sure I got the bead length right by using my bead board. It was about 19", and now it has been fixed to about 16.25". Below are the final images.
I love the final look!!!
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