Fluffy Bead Necklace

Please bear with me, this is just an experiment!

Whenever my friend Lisa and I go to the Hobby Crafts Show at the NEC Birmingham I always make one dodgy purchase,  and it’s taken me until now to admit what that purchase was …….. bags and bags of these fluffy beads that look like some sort of suckie sweet!  They were 50p a big bag and I bought them in every colour, what possessed me? …. Anyway I decided the other night that I would never use them and was putting them ready to give to a friend when I thought I would have a play, before saying goodbye to most of them ….

I cast my mind back to how they were presented on the stall, which was knotted on/and between  two lengths of thin coloured cord and this is what I came up with. 

I used a purple and a blue cord and threaded two or three on one colour, then the other and also on both at the same time, making a knot after each section  (if that makes sense).  To be honest it looks OK and I would wear it, but really the cords could have been a lot longer.  I knotted the two ends together, I didn’t think as this was my first attempt it was worth putting on a proper fastener.

I found this picture on Google and think that this was the sort of thing I was trying to do in my mind’s eye …. oh well back to the drawing board!

Friends Forever Friendship Bracelets

I made these bracelets for a friend’s daughters 16th Birthday sleepover.

I’ve used alphabet beads, 0.5mm red waxed cord, spacer beads and a few left over stickers.

The bracelets couldn’t be easier to make.

I made a sheet of backing cards using publisher and cut them to fit the cello bags I wanted to package the bracelets in.

To make it look a bit more professional, I  have added another piece of card on the back so the surplus cord on the bracelets cannot be seen and a fancy 3D sticker as a bag seal.

I know it’s all a bit of fiddle fart but sometimes it’s the packaging that makes all the difference, a bit like Easter eggs!

What’s On My Desk Wednesday?

Piles and piles of bracelets – the fruit of my Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening labours ……

Every one is different.  I have used a Primark multi-stranded wooden bead necklace (£4), two bags of wooden beads from The Range (£1.99 each), and a mixture of bronze and cream coloured pearls that I had already.  They are threaded on transparent plastic elastic thread which costs about £1.75 a reel – and is probably enough to make at least twenty bracelets

The larger, more unusual beads come from The Range bags of beads and have proved to be the most popular.

But now all my wooden beads are used up except for a few odds and ends ……. so what’s a girl to do ……………???

………. but start on her collection of glass beads of course!!!! This is a collection gathered from car boot finds, Hobbycrafts and Primark plus odds and ends I’ve had for ages.

I’ve gone for a very random look, no pattern, just what came to hand first, and I am thrilled with the results.

I reckon I will get at least fifty from my collection. I intend to give several as end of term gifts and then put the rest away until nearer Christmas.

Lisa and I are planning on doing a bit of car booting in the summer holiday, but we have agreed to walk on opposite sides of a row and then swap over at the top because we will both be looking for the same things …… especially beads and the sight of two ladies fighting would be unseemly!!