Red Hot Air Balloon Pendant

Hello! Recently I had been playing a game with beautiful graphics (Alto's Odyssey, in case you were wondering), where you sandboard across the endless dessert, skim rivers, and bounce off of big, red hot air balloons.

Inspired by balloons in the game, I decided to try making a hot air balloon pendant of my own. Hope you enjoy making it as much as I did, and let's get started!

*Note: I forgot to upload a picture of the 1mm wide golden wire I used, but keep in mind that it will be needed!

Pliers:

• Wire snippers
• Flat-nose pliers
• Round-nose pliers
• *Angled pliers (Optional, but I personally use them with the flat-nosed one to open jump rings easily)

Balloon Basket:

• Twine
• School/ White glue
• Scissors
• Ruler
• *A pin (Optional, but I found it useful when widening holes for the basket chains)

Beads:

• 1.5cm red bead (for the balloon)
• Three 0.3mm red glass beads (for the decorative sandbags)
• 0.8mm red bicone bead (for decoration)
• *A 0.3mm gold glass bead or other decorative item to end a necklace with (Optional, but would make the necklace look nicer)

Others:

• Golden necklace chain
• 1mm golden wire (forgot the picture, whoops!)
• 0.4mm small jump rings
• One bigger 0.6mm jump ring
• Golden necklace clasp

Start by curling the twine into a spiral shape, securing it in place with glue every once in a while. Use a pin to poke a hole in the middle of the spiral, widening it enough for a small jump ring to slide through.

When the ring is halfway in, cut a small bit of twine, thread it through the ring, and glue it to the basket to keep the ring from sliding back out again.

Then, push the ring so the majority is sticking out from the bottom of the basket. That will make it easier to link decorations to the basket's bottom later on.

For the walls, glue the top edges of the spiral and start wrapping the twine upwards.

When it's time to start wrapping the second layer, thread in one small jump ring at a time, gluing the twine around it down so it won't slide out of place. Make sure to spread out each ring evenly away from each other. If it helps, you can always look back at these pictures to see how this step should look like.

For the third and final layer, continue as you did with the first layer, except now you will thread the twine through the jump ring again.

Snip off the extra twine and any unnecessary twine fuzz and the basic basket shape is done!

All we do here is link a red glass bead to a chain of two small jump rings before connecting them to one of the basket's three wall rings. Once each of the three beads are chained to the basket's three sides, we're set for the next step!

To create the net of the balloon, cut 6 lengths of necklace chain, each five links long. Connect each of the necklace chains together to make a circle by opening up 6 small jump rings and linking them to the 6 necklace chains as shown.

Next, place a small jump ring in the middle of the circle (this will be the top-most part of the net).

Cut 3 more lengths of necklace chains, each five links long again. Link the 3 chains to the center jump ring. Then, link the other end of each chain to one of the rings in the circle.

Now, you should be left with something that looks like a pie with 3 equal slices. Lay this new net on top of the balloon, and then we will be connecting it to the basket.

A hot air balloon only really works when the basket is attached to the balloon, so let's get to that.

Using your round-nose pliers, make a loop at the end of some gold wire, leaving about 2 cm or so of additional wire before snipping.

Add the net from the previous step onto the balloon and thread the wire through the top of the net and balloon bead, making another little loop shape on the bottom of the balloon bead to secure the net to the balloon.

Now, if you were to hold the balloon up by the wire loop you made at the top, it becomes a lot easier to notice the three jump rings from the net, drooping down closest towards the ground. Open these three up and connect a 12-link-long necklace chain to each.

To connect the basket to the balloon, open up the jumper rings attached to the basket and link the other ends of the three necklace chains to them.

Now all that's left is the last decoration and the actual necklace for this pendant.

To add our last decoration to the balloon, make another gold wire loop with your round-nose pliers, link the red bicone bead in, and lock it in with a second loop at the end. Open up one of these loops and link the bicone bead to the jump ring at the bottom of the basket.

For the necklace, prepare about 60cm of necklace chain, and snip about 5cm off of it, linking the two chains together with a small jump ring. This gives you the option of wearing the necklace at the longer 60cm point, or 55cm point if you want to wear your balloon a bit higher up.

Add a necklace clasp to the long end of the necklace. For the short end, add a small jump ring to end the necklace. If you would like a more decorative ending, you can link a golden glass bead to that jump ring as well, or some add a different sort of decoration instead of a bead.

That's all for the pendant! Here's how it looks on my sewing mannequin (since I'm not the most photogenic person, haha)!

I used to see tons of pictures of pendants like these in my Pinterest feed and think that they would be a bit complicated to actually try, but no, it was actually a lot easier than I thought it was, and I hope you all think so too! These turned out very beautifully, and if anyone has any tips or pendants of their own to share, I'd love to check those out too!

Anyways, have a nice day, and happy making.