Necklace: That was Easy

What was the nature of your project?

For my DIY project, I decided to take on the task of creating a necklace from staples and other household materials.  I have been interested in jewelry for a substantial part of my life, and I am absolutely fascinated by the people who make jewelry.  Further, I was inspired by the jewelry that several of my friends had made rather recently.  So, this project gave me a chance to learn about the jewelry-making craft in the best way I had available to me: on a college budget.

What kind of guides did you find?

All of my resources were found online.  I found a few style guides that were more technical in nature, one instructional blog post, and one video on YouTube for a pendant design.  Many of the search results tended to be about necklace and pendant staples, as opposed to the staple necklace and pendant that I was going for.

What source was most helpful? What made this/these resources most effective?

I believe that every article that I looked at was helpful to some degree.  Most of those sources were primarily helpful in that they helped me discover what I didn’t want to do, and helped give me a basis for how to go about doing what I actually wanted to do.  The Instructables article by geekgrl5000 was exceptionally helpful to me, though, because of its straightforward nature.  She walks through each step of how to assemble the staples to make them into a nice chain, which I did not stray from much.

What sorts of problems did you encounter along the way?

There were multiple times throughout the design process where I would try something, it would fail, and I would sit for about five minutes before returning to the problem.  First, the chain didn’t want to stay together, so I had to keep reassembling it and trying to close the ends better than I did the first time.  I must’ve said “don’t give up on me” to the different pieces of the chain at least twelve different times over the course of an hour.  Then, I couldn’t figure out a good way to lock the pendant in place (at that time I was convince that I was going to use a paperclip as a go-between for the pendant and the chain).  After I finally figured that out, the pendant gave me trouble; the first time I tried gluing the pieces together, all I got was my fingers.  Then, after all of that, the pendant design that I decided on conflicted with my original idea to use the paperclip as a go-between, so I had to take the paperclip off and figure out how to connect the pendant directly.

Why do you think this assignment is on the course syllabus?

I think that this assignment is one of the best ways to force someone out of their comfort zone.  It is intended to replicate the life of a game designer, or anyone that relies on technology to make a living.  Technology is constantly changing at incredible speeds and sometimes game designers are forced to step out of what they have gotten accustomed to and adapt to the new way that things operate, the better way to accomplish tasks.

Additionally, I found that there were several points along the way where I would get incredibly stressed and have to step back and take a breather.  In those moments, I realized that, if I’m new to programming, I will likely be doing the same thing for those assignments.  In programming, the slightest mistake in code can lead to an enormous problem in the product, and the work to find the fault can be tedious and time-consuming.  So, learning to take a break and breathe on a smaller assignment where there is leeway and not as much of a time commitment helps to prepare me for the bigger project this semester.

Further, I discovered that the way I tend to learn is not necessarily by hand holding, but is also not entirely about discovering everything myself.  I like a closer guide in the beginning, as I’m still learning about what is possible in the realm that I’m working in.  But, as I get more comfortable in the medium, I take a step away from the direct instruction and primarily search for guides that inspire my product, rather than teach it.  I find that I’m more proud of the final product when I go about things in this way.

Credits

As mentioned earlier, the chain design was taken almost directly from geekgrl5000’s article.

Even though I didn’t end up making the pendant like the one in the video, the pendant’s design was inspired by DIY Zhu’s video on YouTube.

I used the article Types of Necklaces, by Lauren Thomann, to determine the length for my necklace.  I settled on a shorter pendant version.

While I did not use any of the designs mentioned in this article, Maggie Connelly’s article helped me realize that staples make easy, natural clasps.