Beaded Wall Hanging Tutorial

This wall hanging was my first project using gold macrame rings that have been hanging around the studio for years.  It was a grand experiment that made me happy the way it turned out.

As usual….it started because of a completely different idea.  I was thinking of a project to use some of the larger pieces of “sea glass” that I get from Pier 1 Imports.

I planned to solder pieces together to make a “sea glass” drink coaster.  ( I did make one coaster with the clear sea glass…..just to see if the idea would work)

After I washed all the pieces and got them ready to solder with copper foil and solder it dawned on me that the most I could plan on selling a drink coaster was $4.00…so that is how I came up the the idea to have beads and these sea glass pieces be the feature of a macrame ring wall hanging.

Step One:  Wrap 20 gauge gold wire tightly on one side of the ring and string beads to the other end, wrapping the end tightly.

Step Two: Wrap more 20 gauge wire around the edges and string on beads.

Step Three: using the first horizontal bead strand, hang bead strands with something interesting at each bottom.  You can see how the pieces of “sea glass” were transformed by soldering the edges and adding a jump ring at the top.  The solder was bright silver and I used a copper patina wash to give them an antique appearance.

The fun thing about a wall hanging is there are no rules and you can use what you have for a OOAK decoration that is just as pretty on the wall, or hanging in the window!