Evenstar Necklace

"He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering. "

J.R.R Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

For me, this quote reflects the style of this pendant. In my past projects, I've used the word elvish multiple times to describe a certain style, though for this project it should definitely be used. The Evenstar pendant can be seen in the Lord of the Ring movies, where it's given to Aragorn by Arwen. Making movie replicas is always quite interesting to do, especially when still working in the technique I always use in my designs, wirework.

- Wire / I used silver plated copper wire of 1,0 and 0,6 mm (e.g. here )
- Pliers
- Beads / more about this in step 19

Cut off a piece of the 1 mm wire, with a length of approximately ... cm. Place the round nose pliers in the middle of the wire and bend the wires up around it.

After having bent the first loop, carefully straighten out the wires again. From that position, bend the second loop - making sure the wire that went under the other in the first loop goes over now. Keep checking with the drawing to be sure the shape is what it should be. The same steps can be used to get to the third loop, though it's a bit wider than the second and first.

Hold the top part of the third loop with the round nose pliers and bend the wires around the pliers to create a small circle. Bend the wires along the circle and cut them off.

Using the thinner wire, wrap around the top circle to lock the wires together and give it a finished look.

After finishing the basic shape for the middle part of the pendant, it's time to move on to the side parts. Cut off two wires and start by bending them in half, making a corner of just a bit less than 90 degrees.

Start shaping - just use your hands instead of pliers here - one of the sides into half a circle, constantly checking if it matches with the original drawing. Once you're done bending the first side, use a pair of pliers to get the second half started. After that, it's a combination of pliers and bending by hand.

Once the basic shape of the side part is there, stop comparing it to the drawing and start looking at the wire frame you already made. Since you used the same image to make that part of the pendant, small changes will most likely be enough.

Repeat the last few steps to make the other side part as well.

Bend the ends of the wires toward each other so that they cross right at the point where the bottom loop switches to the middle loop. Cut off th inner of the two wires right at that point.

Wrap the thinner wire around the tip of the side part and start wrapping the entire wire frame from side to side, making a few coils on every side before moving back to the other side.

After repeating the same pattern for a while, one of the wires will probably look less wrapped than the other. The hemisphere shaped side is a bit longer. To solve this, simply coil one more time on that side every time. So, instead of switching sides after a single coil, make two coils on that side and still one coil on the other side.

Since you're covering quite a bit of length by going back and forth between sides, it could very well be possible you need to change wire once or twice. If that's the case, try to do this somewhere in the middle of a part of coils. If it doesn't feel secure enough, add an extra coil.

Once you've reached the beginning of the middle loop, it's time to add the side part to the middle part! The wrapping technique stays the same, but now every time you're on the side of the middle frame, wrap between the side frame and the middle fram as well.

As you continue along the wires, it might be necessary to make small adjustments to the exact wrapping pattern. At some parts, I needed three or four coils on the outer wire to keep it equal to the inner wire.

Once you are almost at the end of the to-be-wrapped part, bend the wire you didn't cut off yet as shown and cut it off to be able to properly end this side.

Make a last few wraps and end the thinner wire as well.

With that first side done, enjoy you work for a minute! After that, it's time to repeat all those steps for the other side as well ;). The first part where you're joining it to the middle frame can be a bit trickier, since the other side is already on there of course.

For the little stones in the middle of the pendant, I ended up using six small rock crystal beads. The trickiest thing when looking for beads you could use is the way you can thread them. Most beads with teardrop or diamond shapes have a hole breadthwise instead of lengthwise.

Take all six of your beads and lay them out in the order that looks best. The crystals I used were shaped a bit irregularly, so I used the halves that matched best shapewise in the middle.

Cut off three pieces of thin wire and put one through every two beads that are across from each other.

Take one of the three wires with beads and, using the same layout, add it to the wire base frame. Wrap the end of the wire around the frame a few times to secure it.

To give the wire wrapped side part extra support, I wrapped one of the ends around the base of the side parts instead of the middle frame.

Once all beads are secure and you're happy with their composition, cut off the remaining ends and use a pair of flat nose pliers to let the ends of the wire lay as flat as possible.

Bend a piece of the 1 mm wire into a loop and add it to the top circle of the pendant. Add a necklace to it to complete the necklace.