Making beads "float" on a chain, crimping beads?

[crafty-minou]

Hello I'm new to making my own jewelery and I was looking to make something similar to these:



I have some silver chain which this seems to be beaded on and I'll be recieving the beads soon. My problem is that I'm not sure how to make the beads "float" as they seem to be doing on these. I can see some little silver beads there, are they "crimping beads"? If so aren't they usually smooshed onto wire and not chain? Also they seem to be nice round beads, will I need crimp covers or do they have some that when smooshed look like little beads?

Sorry for the long post and my ignorance 

[EvilRachel]

I'm not a jewellery maker, but to me it looks like these are beaded, and not floating on chain at all.  They're probably strung on wire or thread.

[jshires]

I've never attempted this type of project, but I do use crimpingbeads with wire. If you use the little pliers that are made for crimping beads, they will smoosh the bead forst so it kind of looks like a half moon shape, but then there is another section on the plier that curves the moon shape back into a round shape. Thats how it works on wire...not sure if that would work on chain. When I work with beads and chain, I usually string the bead onto an eyepin or small length of wire and use round nose pliers to loop the ends of the wire onto the chain. Hope that makes sense. I can try to explain it better if you have any questions...

[beam_oflight]

Yeah, it looks like, beads on eyepins, with the other end bent round with plyers connected with small bits of chain.

[Tinsel]

To be quite honest those beautiful bracelets look like the big beads are strung between sets of 5-8 silver or clear seed beads, in which case the whole bracelet could be strung on thread or wire and crimped at the ends at the clasps.  That for me would be the quickest easiest way to do it.  Wow, they're pretty.

But if you wanted to do it on medium sized silver chain(and this might be abit fiddly though it would look GORGEOUS), I would think the most common way to do it would be to put each big bead on an eye pin (long piece of wire with a loop already on one end).  You make another loop at the other end, twist it off or just close it shut, clip off the excess wire, do all the big beads and charms like this then if your chain is flexible/large enough links to allow individual links to be opened up, you can cut the chain into the short lengths you need for inbetween and attach a short piece of chain to a clasp, it's free end you attach to the eyepin of your first big bead, attach the next short length of chain to the other end of the big bead where the second loop is. Presto, bead with chain attached both sides!  Attach your next bead to the end of that short piece of chain and continue on to make the bracelet the length you want.  If the silver chain is too tiny to open links to attach to the eyepins you could use small jump rings to attach the chain to the eyepins.

This is just one of many ways to do it.  Hope you get many more good ideas!

[xx_Kellybean]

if you have a chain, you're going to have to put wire through the beads and than curl the ends so that they attach to the chain on both sides.

However, if you are doing it on string......or whatever it's called...that stuff like fishing line?... you would use crimping beads.