Necklace Round Robin Proposal

I had such fun working with Heather, Erin, Erin, and Christine on the Bracelet round robin that we did that I wanted to do it again. Check out my bracelet, I just got it back from Christine last week! It turned out awesome and I love wearing it. Such a fun little collaboration of talented artists! Read about Christine's additions to all the bracelets at her blog post here.

But this time, I'd like to do a necklace round robin!

I'm looking for 4 people who'd like to participate along with me. The best way to do this I think, is to let the Random Integer Generator pick the contestants, so all you have to do is leave a comment if you are interested in playing along. The random generator will pick the 4 contestants and we'll get started right away. I'll leave the comments open for a few days so you have some time to decide.

please read through the entire post before you comment!!

Here's how it will work. All 5 (includes me) people playing along, will start a necklace design, as little or as much as they want. They'll all pass the necklace starts to me and I will add a little bit to each one. I'll pass them to participant number 2 and they will add to each one. They'll pass them on to the next, and so on and so forth. In the end, all participants will end up with the original necklace they started! I love collaborative efforts but there will have to be some guidelines.


1. I'd like to limit the time spent on working on the necklaces to 1 week. SO then the whole project will last a little more than 1 month. This might be hard for some busier designers so if you can't stick to this time line, you might want to rethink playing along.

Keep in mind, if you really want to order specialty items to use in the necklace designs, try to keep the design process cut down to a week, and take into account the time it takes to order and receive stuff.

2. If you've signed up to play but end up getting busy and you can't participate afterall, you have to let me know immediately so that I can pick a replacement.

3. Stick to basic techniques, and keep in mind that not everyone (me for example) knows how to beadweave. Another point would be, if you add things like oxidized metals to your necklace, no everyone (like me for example) has the ability to oxidize the finished piece or their section.

4. If you want the necklace to be a specific length, you'll have to add on a tag that states your desired finished size.

5. Don't know how to start? How about just some chain with some beads dangling off of it? Or start a beaded strand and leave it open using a little scotch tape to keep the beads on the wire. Or you could start wire wrapping some of you favorite art beads. It's up to you how you want to start the piece.

6. Each person will add to the starting design. The goal is not to take apart what has been started, but to keep adding elements to the current design. Each starting designer will need to write down on their tag, what kind of theme they want the end piece to be. Do they want a strung piece, a wire wrapped piece, a chain with charms, etc..... As for colors, the starting designs should give the rest of the participants a clear idea of an overall color theme.

7. Each person will be responsible for shipping the pieces to the next artist. Since the final person in the chain will probably have the priciest mailing- being 4 packages, it would be nice if all the participants could paypal a couple of extra dollars to the final person to help with the shipping of all the packages.

Some good FAQs:
Everyone should start their necklace however they want.
It may be with wire and clasp, it could be chain with a few beads, it could be a wire-wrapped focal bead.
If a necklace gets to the last person without a clasp, they will need to add one.
A necklace could be a one or a multi-strand.

Will we be adding the same component to each necklace or will it depend on the design in progress? I would think something different, so each necklace is completely unique and a play on what has already been added to it.

Should we take pictures along the way?
I suppose we should all blog about it at some point...I think it would be fun to see the progress along the way, but it's not required. Of course we want you to blog about the final necklace when it arrives back to you. Of course, it would also be cool if you could link back to all the people that participated.

I might suggest that we each start a little note card with the bracelet so that each participant could write a little sentence documenting what they put in the necklace in their handwriting that would make its way back to us with the finished piece. That way we would know what component would be added by whom (if it weren't exactly obvious)!

Since this is my first attempt at a necklace round robin, I'd like to just say that I'm really flexible, and if there are any concerns or questions, I'll be happy to talk things over to keep this little blog project fun and easy going. There is no right or wrong way to do this, but I just want to keep it FUN.

I'll go ahead and have the Random integer generator pick the 4 on September 1st.

After I announce who will be participating, I'll send an email with more details and we'll exchange addresses and all that good stuff. Good luck to everyone!! I can't wait to get started!

(a very special thank you goes out to Kelley Wenzel and Christine Damm - thanks for allowing me to bounce ideas off of you and thanks for all of your valuable advice on this project!)