Dishfunctional Designs: Jewelry Tutorial: Pretty Silver Spoon Handle Pendant Necklace

I love the patterns on old silverplated flatware! If I'm lucky, I can often find one or two orphaned spoons or forks when I am out cruising the thrift stores or flea markets. What to do with a pretty old spoon? How about turning it into a unique necklace pendant? Follow along and I'll show you how to do just that!

Here are the tools and materials you will need:

One vintage silverplated spoon or fork with a pretty handle

One 2" headpin

A few 4-6mm beads

Bench vice grip secured to a workbench or table

Jeweler's hand saw with blade

A metal file

Hand drill with small bit (about 4mm) and wood block to drill into

Two lengths of jewelry chain in whatever length you desire. I used two 10" lengths of chain.

A lobster-claw style clasp

Three 6mm jump rings

Two pair of jewelry pliers (chain nose or rosary pliers work well)

Jewelry side cutters

1. Choose a spoon or fork that has a pretty handle.

2. Secure the spoon or fork in your bench vice so that it stays firmly in place while you saw it. (I also have my vice clamped to my workbench so that it does not move around while I am working.) Determine where you want to cut. You can make a mark on your spoon with a marker if that makes it easier for you. I simply eyeball it and cut a little bit below where the bulk of the design stops.

3. Use your jewelry saw to cut off the end of your spoon or fork. Hold the saw vertically and saw in an up and down motion. The size of saw blade isn't super important here, as we are simply cutting the end off of the spoon.

4. Use your drill with bit and drill a hole into the end of your spoon handle at the end where you made the saw cut. I like to drill my holes about 1/8" in from the end. Make sure you drill into a block of wood.

5. Use a metal file to smooth down any sharp or pointy edges from the cut end of your spoon handle.

6. This image shows the chain assembly. Use one 6mm jump ring and thread it through the hole in your spoon. Thread one end of each of your two lengths of jewelry chain onto the same open jump ring and then close the jump ring. Scroll down and take a look at image 16 if you do not know how to open a jump ring.

7. This image shows the chain assembly with the chain attached and jump ring closed. Now it's time to add some beads to our pendant to give it a little bit of color!

8. Get out your beads! For my pendant, I used two small beads that were each about 5mm in size. I used a silver bead and a turquoise bead.

9. Thread your beads onto your headpin.

10. Grip the headpin above the beads and use your chain nose or rosary pliers (pliers with a rounded end) to form a loop in the head pin above the beads.

11. Thread the end of the head pin through the jump ring that you used to attach the chain to your spoon pendant.

12. Use one pair of your pliers to hold the head pin at the loop that you just created. Use your second pair of pliers in your other hand to grip the tail end of the head pin wire. Wrap the head pin wire around the "neck" of the head pin between the beads and the loop.

13. Continue to wrap the tail end of the head pin wire until you run out of room on the neck. Twice is usually sufficient.

14. Use your side cutter pliers to cut the remaining tail end of wire from the head pin. Use your chain nose pliers to tuck in any pointy end of wire into the previous wire wraps.

15. This image shows the assembly for the clasp. Chain end, jump ring, clasp, jump ring, and other chain end. Open the jump rings (see step 16 below) and thread on the chain ends and clasp in the order as shown in the photo and then close the jump rings.

16. The correct way to open a jump ring is to use two pair of pliers

(I had to take the photo with one hand so my image only shows one!) Hold the jump ring seam-side up. Grip the jump ring with one pair of pliers on each side of the seam and use a twisting motion, turning the pliers opposite directions of each other to open the jump ring at its seam. Close the jump ring by using the same motion, bringing the end of the jump ring back together.