Montauk Rock Necklace

A few weeks back I took a little trip out to Montauk where I spent a lot of time on the rocky beach picking up cool stuff on the beach. Shells, sea glass, driftwood, strange pieces of metal… My pockets were pretty full. I knew that I wanted to make a necklace of some kind, but I didn’t know exactly what I would want to make. After some arranging and rearranging, I settled on the four perfect rocks and got to work on the Montauk Rock Necklace.

I am so addicted to these necklace projects that take a lot of thought, time, and tedious work. Every night after work or on Sunday afternoons it is so nice to multi-task witha little sewing project and watch things come together. I also love the idea of making something with items that remind me of a special weekend or time. 🙂

What you need to make this necklace:
–Leather scraps (I used pieces of a leather jacket that I bought at the Goodwill Outlet in Indianapolis.)
–Aleene’s 7800 Adhesive
-Rocks
–Gold and silver seed beads. I also used some clear beads that I got at Michaels.

Begin by laying out your rocks and arranging them in a way that you like. Then you can draw a shape for the leather base of your necklace and then cut it out. After you have your leather shape, you need to add quite a bit of super glue to the bottom of the rock. Add just enough so that the rocks are secure, but don’t add too much that it oozes everywhere.

After I let the rocks dry for 24 hours, I stitched my 1/2 inch strips of leather to the top of the necklace to be the ties. Then I did a blanket stitch around the whole necklace to make the edges look finished. I also stitched my gold embroidery thread over the tops of the rocks so they’d look like they were being held in place by the thread. Then I started to fill in the blank spaces with the seed beads.

Continue to fill in the necklace with beads. Once you’re done, cut out another piece of leather and hot glue or superglue it to the back of the necklace to hide all of your stitching. 🙂

I wore this necklace last weekend when Sean, Adele, and I had a little picnic in the northern section of Central Park. The necklace matched the bedrock of Manhattan. 🙂

It was such a perfect afternoon in the park. We read, we chatted, we climbed the rocks a bit, and I worked on another necklace I’m making. One thing’s for certain, though. Moving to NYC sure hasn’t made us into ladies. 😉