Sansa Stark Dark Necklace

I will be talking about how I made Sansa's necklace shown to the left. It was pretty simple to make and cost no more than £15.

You will need:

• A circular, wooden belt buckle - 75mm wide. The product and the shipping was under £6 and it came as a pack of five so if I messed up, I had spares. (x)

• A lot of black/grey jump rings (approximately 170 in total - 85 8mm rings and 85 6mm rings). (x)

• Fimo Professional Modelling Clay - Black.

• Black acrylic paint.

• 2 wire rings or something that can be bent into a circle.

• 2 sets of pliers (I used round-nosed ones and flat-nosed ones)

To begin, I painted the wooden buckle using black acrylic paint. The exact brand I used was Daler Rowney Graduate Acrylic in Pearl Black (032) and I bought this at my local Hobbycraft a few years ago. The Pearl Black colour is quite shiny so it gives the buckle a metallic look rather than just plain black.

I painted a thin coat then waited about 12 hours for it to dry before applying another. Overall, I did 3/4 coats so the colour would be protected.

If you wanted, you could do a coat of varnish to protect the paint from scratches and chipping but I didn't do this (if you do use varnish, be sure to do it outside with mouth and nose protection as the fumes can be quite bad).

Next, I used the jump rings to make a chain.

The jump rings came in a small box with different compartments so I could easily navigate between them. The ones I bought on Amazon were cheaper than the ones in Hobbycraft (the 1500 rings (approximately) I bought was the same cost as a bag of 70 rings).

I used a pair of flat-nosed pliers to grab the rings and a pair of round-nosed ones to close them. As I didn't have enough of the 8mm rings, I used the next size down that was pretty much identical in colour (6mm) and alternated between them to create a chain.

The length of my chain was around 28 inches (71cm) as I wanted it to go around my neck, the buckle to sit on the top of my chest and the 'needle' to hang by my hips. It took me about an hour and a half to connect all the rings.

To create the 'needle', I used Fimo Professional clay that I bought from Hobbycraft. The needle shape was hard to create as it was only clay and not metal formed in a cast.

I rolled out a chunk to about a diameter of 9mm. I did not need as much as I'd thought so I had to cut a large portion of the tube shape off. At one end, I gently pinched the clay to form a point and then I cut off a bit more until the needle was about 13cm long (I had to make this twice as the first attempt was way too long). I used the end of a paintbrush to poke a hole in the top end for you to attach the chain to - I poked a hole, then turned it over and pushed it through the other side to even it out.

The clay was not completely smooth as the one in the show but it is very hard when it is rolled between your fingers/hands. I still think it looked pretty good.

I baked it in the oven for 30 minutes as instructed on a baking tray covered in a sheet of baking paper (I didn't want to risk it).

To connect the buckle to the chain and the chain to the needle, I used 2 wire rings that I cut down to size using the sharp part of the pliers.

The ring attaching the chain to the buckle was the biggest of the 2 with a diameter of 18mm - it was big enough to fit around the buckle, but not too big so it wasn't that loose.

The ring attaching the chain to the needle was a lot smaller and was in more of an oval shape, rather than an exact circle.

The picture to the left shows how the chain should fit around the buckle and also how the buckle looks when it is completely painted.

I hope this tutorial was useful!

#gameofthrones #sansastark #cosplay #diy