I fell in love with these red crystal aurora borealis beads from Michael's, but I will admit they are not the best quality beads as far as symmetrically proportions bead holes. This is something to think about when selecting beads to knot between because if the holes are overly large, your knots will slip through the hole.
Because of the bead hole issue and my limited stock of nylon cord, I ended up using two strands of size 4 cording together to compensate for some of the overly large holes. I also culled through my beads, and any that were super large even with the double cord, I set aside to use for possible earrings. I also made sure that as I strung on the beads I checked that the hole would not go over the knot I had just made. This took extra time, but I persevered and I'm happy with the results.
If you don't have patience for culling and checking holes as you go, spend the extra few dollars and get higher quality beads. This would also mean you could probably use just one strand of nylon cord versus two.
Here are the materials I ended up using for this crystal necklace:
71 - 8mm red AB crystal beads
2 packets of size 4 red nylon cord with attached needles
1 corsage pin
Clear drying tacky glue
Scissors
Glue Note: Any sort of glue that drying clear will work on this. Other than tacky glue, another option is hypo-cement, which is a favorite of many beaders and available from most jewelry supply vendors.
