Wooden pendant and charm necklace - vintage {tutorial}

In my free time, I often find myself trawling the internet for inspiration. Last holidays I stumbled upon scrabble pendants, using both resin and special hooks, none of which I could seem to find around Cape Town. (If you ever want to buy Trivial Pursuit, it is available in just about every charity shop, wooden scrabble pieces, on the other hand, are not!)

My Plan B turned out quite well and now that i do have some (plastic) scrabble pieces I can't decide which ones I prefer.

What you need:
Wood pieces (about 2x2cm) or scrabble tiles
Charms
Chain
3 rings
Pictures to size (or wrapping paper etc)
Wood glue (or something to seal the ink onto the paper-explained later)
Decoupage glue
Paint brush
Kebab stick
Sand paper
Scissors and pliers (optional)
1.5mm drill bit

After many trial and error attempts, I found that the decoupage glue was smudging the ink and causing it to go dull (weird i know!). So, to try and stop this I coated the front and back of each picture with a thin layer of wood glue, using the kebab stick.

While the glue is drying sand off the corners of the wood pieces (right) to give a rounded edge (left).

Cut out two pictures (for front and back) so that they match the size of the wood piece. Glue these down with wood glue. Once dry, coat the pendant thinly with decoupage glue. Do this about 3 times, allowing decoupage glue to dry in between coats.

Mark where you want your hole, about 2/3mm from the top of the pendant, and drill. The trickest step is trying to get the ring through the hole, without damaging the wood. Be careful and watch that the wood isn't getting damaged as you push the ring through.

Slip the chain through the ring. Add a ring to the charm and slip both ends of the chain though this ring. This should allow the charm to sit flat on the pendant (particularly important for a wide, flat charm such as this key). Alternatively, you can just connect the ring of the charm to the ring of the pendant (as below).

Now all you need to do is connect up the two ends of the chain with the third ring and you're done!
(If you do not want the chain to be as long then you may need to use a clasp to be able to get the necklace on and off.)