Time for something a little bit different.

Every year I look for new ornament ideas online. It is such a chore. I put in hours and hours putting search terms in to google and then sorting through the mess that comes up. In some cases I am sorting through the same ornaments I looked at last year. Other times, depending on the search term I am sorting through pages and pages with links to the same ideas.

This year I have decided to take a different approach. I am going to contribute to the fray. My goal is to compile a large selection of ornaments. My hope is that most of them will be bead oriented but I suspect that not all of them will be. I’m going for a variety of styles and levels of difficulty. I am sure many of them will be kid friendly.

So, I’ve been busy searching for, and making ornaments. My goal for today is to get photos of many of them and get them up online. I’ve started with the easy stuff! If I found the design online I will post a link to the site I got it from. If it is from a book, I will put a link to the book. Some are easy enough that you can look at them and figure them out on your own. Going forward, I hope to get photos of the projects in different stages. Terry has even offered to video some of them.

If you have any good ornament ideas I would love to hear them. If you have links to sites with good ornaments I would love to add them here. Even if they are your own sites, shill away! All comments need to be approved, so there will be no spamming. If you do provide a good link, I will do my best to give it its own post. I think that will make it easier for people to find. Ultimately I’d like to make this site a good a good one stop shop for ornament ideas. It can be crazy trying to sift through everything out on the internet to find what you are looking for!

I love to bead. I love the holidays and I love to make Christmas Ornaments. I think I am going to go and make some hot chocolate and get started!

Happy Beading

Ocean Wonders

Ocean Wonders, focal piece

This necklace took a bit longer to make than I thought it would. I’ve gotten used to making things that go together pretty quickly, so it took a bit of mental focus to get this one done. I love it though. I wear it all the time and I have gotten quite a few compliments on it.

Supplies: I used the swarovski pearls. They are easy to find, they are very uniform in appearance and they aren’t too spendy. The seed beads were easy easy enough to find, although I did go for different colors. Looking at the photo in the book, mine are a slightly different shape. I found quite a few really gorgeous shell pendents but I was surprised by how expensive they are. I looked at some in the $14-$19 range and decided that was just too much to spend. I found this one at Fire Mountain. I ordered more than 15 things, so I got it for $6.05, that was a considerable savings over the others. I then chose the color of my seed beads to go with it. I couldn’t find pearls for the bail that I liked, so I opted for larger seed beads for that. I did have silver toggle clasps that I could have used but I am loving copper at the moment so I went with that. The design calls for a pewter toggle clasp. They used a starfish toggle, it goes nicely with the name of the necklace .

Assembly: This took a little bit of patience on my part. I still don’t feel like I have a lot of experience with the smaller beads. I am sure that I am a bit pokier than I need to be. It was slower going than I expected, but I have to say the technique is very simple. It was a very easy necklace to assemble.

This design is another one out of the “Pearl” book in the “Create Jewelry” series. The book is by Marlene Blessing and Jamie Hogsett. Instructions for this design start on page 93. I have to say that I have made more things out this design book than any other book I own. I Really want to make the peach pearl necklace with the turquoise nuggets but I am having trouble finding the right pendant.

Purple Pearls, ok so they aren’t purple.

Purple Pearls, only I went with teal.

I am titling this post “Purple Pearls” because when you buy this book, I want you to find the instructions easily. The pattern title is “Purple Pearls”. The Create Jewelry is a pretty neat series. This particular piece is in the “Pearl” Edition. The book is by Marlene Blessing & Jamie Hogsett. You can look for this one on page 23. The Burgundy Pearls that they chose look better, but unfortunately I don’t own any mauve clothes.

Supplies: I believe I ordered from Fusion for this project. I just dumped most of the supplies in a shopping cart and came in just under $35. That did not include the basic stringing materials. It requires wire cutters, crimping pliers and a bead stop to make this necklace. Swarovski Crystals and Crystal Pearls come in a variety of colors so you have lots of options here. When I choose colors for a project I tend to stick with colors that I wear. I have a lot of teal colored beads in my stash. The theory is that if I don’t care for the piece, I can always take it apart and use the materials to make something else. That isn’t going to happen with this piece though. I have a teal satin blouse that this goes beautifully with. 🙂

Assembly: Construction wise this goes together pretty easily. Instruction-wise I kept losing my place in the pattern. So I went with the phone-a-friend option. Sort of. I nicely asked my husband if he would read the pattern to me. I was able to just listen and follow the directions. He was able to read it smoothly without losing his place. It sounds silly, but when you read something, stop and look up to do it and then look back down it is very easy to lose your spot. Especially if it is a non-repeating, repeating pattern. Let me explain, there is a somewhat random pattern that needs to be repeated three times. If you have a helper this goes together in a snap. Or you know, you just might be better at following directions than I am, and not need any assistance at all. :p

The finished size comes in at 28″ (71cm)

Design: This is a versatile pearl necklace. One half of the necklace is a combination of Swarovski Pearls, Crystals and Rhinestone Rounds. The other half is just pearls. I have worn it with the crystals in the front, as well as off to the side and it looks great both ways. The look of knotted pearls is cleverly achieved with delica beads. This went together in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to hand knot. I think this one is a keeper.

Deep Forest

Deep Forest Earrings

I need to get another photo of these earrings. The ebony wood beads are not facing the same direction, so one looks wider than the other, In reality, they match and they look awesome! I love this book.

This particular pair of earrings can be made in 15 minutes. Instructions can be found in the book “Perfect match”. It uses the “Wire Wrapping a Top Drilled Bead With an Accent Bead” technique that can be found in the front of the book. It is made using the basic tool kit.

Supplies: I had a difficult time trying to locate the 2 12×12 olivine faceted glass briolettes. Instead I went with the Swarovski Crystal Briolette. I had two choices, 11x10mm and 15.4x14mm. I went with the larger size. I thought I would have trouble finding the exact wood beads, but they were surprisingly easy to find. I bought mine individually from Fusion, but I also saw them by the strand at my local Joann store.

Assembly: When I ordered the supplies I hadn’t really taken a good look at the instructions for making the earrings. I assumed (you know what they say about that) :p that the olivine briolette would be a separate wrap that dangled below the rest of the earring. When I noticed that the directions indicated otherwise, I even went so far as to make a sample with the briolette swinging freely.. I have to say though that the earring design is just perfect the way that it is. The extra link in my sample detracted from the overall look of the earrings. I love how they swing when I wear them.

Tip: When ordering beads individually it is sometimes fun to pick up an extra one to play with.

In this case the beads are wood. Natural things do not tend to be as perfect as manufactured things. It is why I went with the Swarovski Pearls in the Center of Attention necklace. In that piece, I think that uniformity was necessary. With the wood beads in this piece, I was worried about variations and I wanted to up the chances of having a matched pair. I have to say that all three beads looked great. I could have used any of them. That left me with an extra bead. I don’t have any other wood beads to store it with, and I hate to devote a whole compartment to storing one inexpensive bead. I decided I needed a necklace.

Accent Necklace with a wood focal bead.

Ugh, I just noticed that I have silver Daisy Spacer beads and a copper toggle clasp. I prefer the look of the copper colored clasp with the earthy colors of the beads, but the earrings are made with silver wire. It looks like I am going to have to redo this one. That is ok, it will go back together pretty quickly. I have the wood bead, two daisy spacers, two faceted crystal rounds, large seed beads, a clasp and crimping supplies. The Seed beads were purchased to make a bail for a pendant on a pearl necklace. I just love it when I find a good use for left overs. I really liked the pearls in the earrings though so I decided to make another necklace.

A classic strand of pearls for Fall.

I loved the pearls so much, I decided that I need a strand to wear. Knotting pearls isn’t as complicated as it seems. I hope to get a tutorial up this weekend. If the idea of hand knotting pearls seems a bit much, you could always crimp them. I would space them though with a coordinating seed bead.

When I was putting my new goodies away I noticed that I now own several pieces in earthy brown and green tones. I adore them because they remind me of hiking in the Pacific Northwest. Remember the Hammered Silver Leaf earrings? Those are also green. I now have two sets of earrings and two necklaces that I can mix and match. I like complimentary things more than I like matchy, matchy sets so this works well for me. The pearls are just a smidge longer than the seed bead necklace and they look great layered together.

Crystals, Wood and Pearls