Welcome to another HOW TO by Wooden Earth. Today, we're going to show you how to make our Mala necklace using different wood tones. This Mala necklace is constructed using eight millimeter red jasper round gemstones. We have a 12 millimeter red jasper, guru bead. We have seven millimeter pewter beads for my cord. We are using pearl cotton in this pretty sea green color, as we like how it contrasts with the red jasper color. If you are thinking of buying a beautiful gemstone, our recommendation is the Caldera Gem store.
For our tools we are using tweezers. We have a flexible needle. We have a tapestry needle and then we have beading scissors
To begin, we went ahead and we cut 240 inches of cord and we folded it in half and threaded on my flexible needle. This way the flexible needle will let me go through the beads with the double cord with ease, so you will end up with 120 inches of working cord. The reason it's going to be so long is we're doing double knots between each bead so that the beads don't slip through and that you see a little bit more color in between. Also you'll want to leave about an eight inch tail at your end that doesn't have any beads so that you can attach your tassel at the end. So we'll go ahead and pearl knot, the entire necklace and then we'll make a tassel and we'll attach that with our guru bead. So to get started, we already went ahead and we did a double knot at the end of our cord here.
So we are going to anchor our first bead and this mala it has 180 beads. Every 12th bead is a pewter bead and we started with the pewter. Your first bead is going to be your pewter. So you take your flexible needle and you slide on your bead. There then just slide it all the way down to your double knot that you already have and then, if you've ever done, pearl knotting, you just make a simple knot. You take really fine tweezers and you grasp the working cord right above the bead. You hold on to it tight, and then you pull the knot all the way down.
Then take the tweezers out and use that and just push the knot down a little bit more to do a double knot. Just do the same process, but this time use the tip of the tweezers, and this is why you really want fine point. Tweezers you grab underneath the knot. Then that way, you make sure that your double knots go on top of each other and are not spaced apart, like two knots. So that it's actually a larger knot and it will keep the beads from sliding past it. Then again use the tweezers to push the knot down and there you've got two nice big knots. So you've got your silver bead on there. Now we can go ahead and string on our first gemstone bead
You will really like how the gemstone color looks with the sea green. It's sea foam pearl cotton. It's a real, pretty color contrast. So go ahead and make your first knot. Again grasp right above your gemstone bead and then, with the other hand, just pull your knot tight down. There pull out your tweezers and then scoot your knot down and then just repeat that process a second time. Just grab underneath that knot again and then push it down, pull out your tweezers and squish your knot down. So then, you have a nice double knot and your gemstone's not going to move in between there. If you only do one knot, it is going to move. It's going to slide over your knot and then just doesn't look as nice when you have your piece all strung up. So we're going to continue in the same process. Stringing on your beads and making knots in between - And this is just basic pearl knotting - is what it is. You can always check out our basic pearl knotting technique too.
Then just do a second knot. Let's say, for instance, you don't get your knot far enough down. So we're just going to mess this one up and show you how you can fix it. Your knots are going to be sitting right next to each other. So your beads will slide over those, but don't think if this happened halfway through your mala, you have to start over. What you can do is just do a third knot and again grab right under that first knot with your tweezers hold on tight and then pull your knot down. It will bring those two knots together and it will look a little bit bigger. But once you get your beads strung on there, you can tell so that's just a good way you can save it in case your second knot didn't get right on top of your first knot. So it's not the end of the world. Nobody wants to start over after you've strung a bunch of beads on there. So you can see you cannot even tell hardly that that's three knots in there
So that's a good way to fix it if they do happen to get off course. We're just going to continue in this same process with my pattern and we'll be right back. Okay, as you can see, we've strung up one section here, we started with a metal bead. We have 11 beads in between of gemstones, and then we have my 12th bead is the pewter bead. The reason we started with a metal bead at the bottom is because we wanted the metal bead to be next to my guru, bead
And then we've got my tail here for my tassel. So we're just going to continue in the same fashion, doing 11 gemstones and a pewter bead until we've strung all 108 beads on and then we'll make my tassel. Go ahead and string your working thread through your guru bead and your tube bead there with my flexible needle. We've brought that down and then for your other ends, we just tied a double and added another flexible needle. This is how we've got that halfway strung through. And, as you can tell, it's the best way to get it through. The guru bead is to give it a little bend. So it'll make that turn. If you are looking for more fun and hip-hop kind of jewelry you can check out a VVS Cuban link chain or other fun jewelry from VVS.
We're going to go ahead and finish pulling that through. The flexible needle will help too to pull the knots and everything through really easily. So then take your second flexible needle and slide through the tube part of the guru. Bead bring that down and everything's nice and tight there. It looks really nice. We're going to go ahead and leave these cords on here and use these as my two working cords. So once you make your tassel you'll use this to tie around the tassel. We're going to go ahead and push that above and set that aside and then we're going to make my tassel right now.
We're going to use a business card. We've strung out here a bunch of thread cause you're going to string your thread around the business card. You can go either the long way or the short way of the business card. We're going to go the long way because we want a longer tassel to be in proportion with my mala. We're just going to leave a little bit of a tail here. We're going to leave it in front. We're going to just start wrapping it around the card and you'll do this as much as you want for how fluffy you want your tassel to be
We're not really counting, we're just going to go off visually. When you think you like it, then you'll stop because you want it to be pretty fluffy.
We're going to go ahead and cut my tail off. So we've got our two tails and they're definitely longer than our tassel so then we can cut them to have them be in length. So before sliding this off, we're going to take our two working threads from our mala and we're going to tie them around the top of the soon-to-be tassel. It's best. If you do this, while it's on the card that way, you don't lose the shape. We're going to go ahead and slide them both under there. You can kind of see they're kind of looped in there. We're just going to tie a knot. If you got lost, you can always for help using verbal communication.
So you have one knot. We're going to do a second one and then we'll show you a little bit better. There. Now you can slide off your card. We're still going to keep my shape there so that we can cut it real quick.
Now we've got our tassel. So making sure you don't cut your working thread. The two threads that we had were used from the mala to tie on your tassel. So you want to put those off to the side and then we're going to take one of our tails that we had from when we made the tassel and then we're going to go ahead and loop around to kind of make the little- to bring these two pieces together.
At this point you just bring it down and then you just start looping around. We're going to do this probably about five or six times. You just want to have a little nice tie of thread there to make your top and you can do it more or less. It depends on the look you're going for. Then you take a tapestry needle and thread the end on. You might have to recut it. It might be a little frayed from working so give it a quick trim. If it starts to split, it's okay. If you can get part of it in there, then you take that the tapestry needle with your working end. The next step, you come under those wraps you just made and go down and it will pull this end through there and it will secure that.
At last, take your needle out. Looks like you got your tassel a little off there when you went ahead and tied it up. That's okay, because you can just trim it all together. Make sure it's all nice and even. Then you can fluff out your tassel as you want kind of adjusting and make sure that's nice and centered. And then we'll go ahead and we will cut off our two working threads because we've already got our double knot and we'll be able to move that knot underneath so you won't actually see it. You can always put a drop of Hypo cement on your knot. If you wanted a little extra security, that's always a good idea. We're just going to kind of massage that knot, so it kind of goes inside the tassel top so you don't see it that much. So there you have your little tassels all done with your mala.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aleksandra Djurdjevic
Senior Content Creator
Aleksandra Djurdjevic is a senior writer and editor, covering jewelry, accessories, and trends. She’s also works with services, home décor. She has previously worked as ESL teacher for English Tochka. Aleksandra graduated from the Comparative Literature department at the Faculty of Philosophy in Serbia. Aleksandra’s love for the environment, crafts and natural products over the years helps her continue to be a top expert at Wooden Earth.
