Dressing up Donuts

The dilemma of the donut - or - how to hang a wide, flat bead with a single, front to back hole. If you can find one of those fancy, specialized donut-bail findings that fits, well and good - but life sometimes doesn't work out that way. (Sometimes? Ha!)

But necessity is the mother of invention - and there is nothing so invention-inspiring as not having the part you need to finish a necklace!

Now, a plain piece of wire, wrapped around the donut will do the trick from a structural point of view - but it looks unfinished - so the trick is to dress it up and make it look fine! So we're going to dress it up with some beads from the necklace itself - to make it look all integrated and NOT like an afterthought.

Loop your wire through the donut (about 6 inches - choose wire heavy enough to bear the weight of the donut - 20 gauge or more) and fold it in half.







Bend one half of the wire around the other wire.












Then, using pliers to hold the straight wire securely, wrap the bent wire around the long wire a few times for a nice, wrapped coil. This is, essentially, a giant, wrapped loop.












Trim the end off. Add a coordinating bead (from the supplies for the necklace)

















Now create another wrapped loop - so that you can attach it to the necklace proper.

Now, take some headpins and some of the beads from the necklace supplies - we are going to add dangles to the front of the donut.








Select some beads, and start the loop - but don't finish it.











Slide them onto the wire loop on the front side of the donut (the front might be arbitrary - depending on the styling and design of the donut.)











Finish wrapping the loop.















Keep adding them.











Until you fill up the wire and make a nice bunch of "berries" on the front of the donut.

You can even add a few more of the dangles to the necklace part to "integrate" the look.

And that's a durn dressy lookin' donut if I do say so myself!