"Asteroid" Diffuser Necklace

Have you ever found crafting supplies while browsing at the hardware store? I have! You'd be surprised the types of materials you can find if you look at ordinary building materials in a different way. What a contractor might see as a box of nails, you can turn into string art! Scraps of wood? Those can be painted orange and turned into Halloween pumpkins. Copper pipes? Chop them up and make a necklace! Ok that last one might seem like a stretch, but that's what makes this necklace fun to make!

You will need:

Pipe cutter

Copper pipe pieces: 1 1/4 inch, 1 inch, 3/4 inch, 1/2 inch

Hack saw

Lava rock bead (10M)

Copper chain

Copper seed beads

Copper eye pin

Take a stroll through the plumbing department at your local hardware store. Kindly decline the help from the guy who asks if he can help you find something. Explain that you're not actually doing plumbing, and you'll flag him down if you need anything. I tend to find materials at the hardware store best when someone isn't hovering around.

Search for the sizes of pipe you want. I found copper couplings and end caps in sizes 1 1/4 inch, 1 inch, 3/4 inch and 1/2 inch. They were different heights, but they nested into each other nicely and I thought they'd be great to make into a necklace.

While you are at the hardware store, pick up a pipe cutter. Specifically one that will cut copper pipes, not just PVC. They're not too expensive and come in handy for these types of projects... and plumbing, if you ever actually have to do that too.

Now that we have our pipes, lets cut some rings out! For the smaller pipes, I was able to use the pipe cutter I bought. To use the pipe cutter, insert the pipe, lightly tighten the bolt and slowly turn. Once you have scored a line, lightly tighten the bolt on the cutter and turn the pipe around again. Keep doing this until the pipe cutter cuts all the way though. It is easier to do several light passes then trying to do one deep cut.

The larger pipes wouldn't fit in the pipe cutter, so I decided to cut them using a hacksaw. I marked the correct depth on the pipe with a Sharpie and then tightened the pipe into my vice grip. Carefully using the hacksaw, I lightly scored a line around the pipe. I rotated the pipe as I went around it and let the saw do all the work.

I'm not going to sugar coat it, cutting pieces of pipe with a hacksaw takes some work. Use caution so you don't cut yourself. Also make sure to wear protective gear to keep copper dust from floating up into your nose, mouth or eyes.

Once I finally had the rings cut out, I found they were a little jagged around the edges. The pipe cutter produces cleaner cuts, but they can still be sharp so use caution. I laid the rings flat on coarse grit sandpaper and sanded the ends of the rings in a circular motion. Once the bulk of the rough edges had been removed, I switched to finer grit sandpaper and wet it a little bit. Sanding in a circular motion again, I kept going until I could see the edges were really getting cleaned up. Next, I sanded around the outside of each ring with the fine grit sandpaper to give the copper a brushed look.

Find the smallest drill bit you can. I believe this is a 1/16 bit? The hole only needs to be big enough to feed the eye pin through, so look for a really little drill bit.

I clamped the rings into a vice grip again and then carefully drilled a hole in the top and bottom of each ring, making sure the holes were directly across from each other.

Wear eye protection! The drill will spin out tiny pieces of copper.

Next is the tricky part. You will need lava beds, eye pins and seed beads. Seed beads are tiny little beads, usually made out of glass. Feed a seed bead on to the eye pin. Then feed one end of the largest ring onto the eye pin. Add another seed bead, then the next sized ring and so on. You may find 2 seed beads fit better than one, or you may have to split the difference and do 2 on one side and 1 on the other size. Ideally it would be equal on both sides, but it might not work out quite that way.

Feed on all the beads on to one side then add the lava bead to the middle. Once you have the middle bead in place, reverse the pattern and feed the other sides of the rings on to the eye pin, adding seed beads as you go.

This part takes some patience, feeding each bead on to the eye pin and getting the seed beads in place can be tricky. Keep a bowl below you when you work in case you drop seed beads, they're tiny little things and are easy to lose!

Once I got to the end of the beading, I found I had one too many seed beads at the beginning of the eye pin. This left me too short of a tail on the end of the eye pin to loop around. Instead of unthreading everything and redoing it all, I used a pair of pliers and broke the extra bead off. Seed beads are glass, so it shattered pretty easily, just be careful not to shoot a piece into your eye! Breaking the bead saved me from starting over and gave me enough pin at the end to bend it into a loop with little needle nose pliers. To add the chain, I gently bent out the ends of the pin and slid the chain on. I fixed the ends again so they were flush with the beads and I was done!

The stone in the middle of the pendent isn't actually an asteroid (gasp!). If I had access to an asteroid I would have definitely used that instead! Instead I had to utilize lava rock. Lava rocks are naturally absorptive so I thought this would work out to be an aromatic necklace. Drip a drop of your favorite oil onto the bead and enjoy!

Each of the rings can twist and turn and glitter in the sunlight! You may want to put some metal polish on the rings to keep them from tarnishing, but realize that copper will likely oxidize over time. If you don't want to use this as a necklace, it can also be used as a decoration in a window or perhaps hang it from your mirror in your car?

This would be a great gift for a 7th wedding anniversary too (the copper anniversary). I bet no one would guess your necklace started as pipes from the hardware store ;)