Making a statement ...

... necklace. It's funny how breaking up the title like that seems to grab more attention to a blog post, similar to how a fun statement necklace can add interest to an otherwise simple outfit.

Today has been quite dreary, and my lackluster attire wasn't helping matters. My cream-colored jeans, navy camisole and burgundy open knit sweater needed a pop of something to liven it up (not to mention my mood; I thrive on sunshine).
 
So, I remembered these pretty pink flowers printed on one of the brochures in last month's Eco Emi box. The brochure was made out of shiny card stock that was prefect for another DIY, especially one to help brighten my day.

To start, I cut out the simple pale pink flower outlines and folded the petals to add dimension. At first, I considered attaching them to the sock tops leftover from my last post (I thought the ankle bands I cut off of Hayden's old socks would work as hair ties, which is true), but then I opted to make them the focal point of my outfit instead.

As the eye-catching floral detail on a statement necklace, I thought I should add some variety with another flower found inside the brochure. It looks great as the inside layer to one of the other flowers.

I gave the solid flower the same treatment (cut it out and folded up the petals), and then pulled out some pearly beads from my craft stuff to jazz up the centers. While rummaging through my stash of materials, I searched for more supplies to construct the rest of my floral statement necklace.

I found a an old white beaded necklace (just an inexpensive one I had from that bag of beaded necklaces my mother-in-law gave me a while back), a taupe satin ribbon that was on a gift wrapped from Nordstrom (it's like their standard gift-wrapping ribbon), some jewelry wire and leftover white lace seam binding (Oops! It didn't make it in the supplies picture above, but it's in the next step).

I folded the white beaded necklace in half, tying the lace seam binding to one end. Then, I wove the beaded necklace and binding together, as shown, and tied it off at the other end to secure it.

I slipped the satin ribbon through the loops at each end of the necklace to hook it together and serve as another decorative element.

Here's how it looked at this stage. It could be worn simply like this, but I wanted to embellish it more with those pretty flowers (they are what inspired this DIY in the first place).

I attached the flowers by threading the jewelry wire through them and twisting the wire around the beaded necklace where I wanted them. I made sure to add three pearly beads on the center of the wire to act as the centers of the flowers, too.

I must say that this floral statement necklace really did brighten my day. The sun even came out for a bit, which was nice, as well.

Oh, and the kids were inspired to get creative, too. Hayden somehow came up with the idea to build a bird house. We don't have a bird and her plan was to keep it inside. I think it was just a fun temporary project. Here's what she built with her brother, Jacob. I just had to take a pic of it to share.
 

And for those of you who may be wondering about the Pure Bar wrapper project, it's going to be a while before I make something with them. So far, I only have about 10 wrappers, and the ones I ordered after the Twitter chat are on back order (that's a successful Twitter chat). I guess I'll have to pick up some more at the local grocery store. Unfortunately, they only sell two flavors. That's motivation to take the trek to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, as if I need an excuse to do that :-)