Festive gifts

Recently I've been busy making some gifts for friends and family to wear. My mum has always liked pandas so when I found this porcelain panda bead online at The Bead Shop Manchester, I had to buy it: http://www.the-beadshop.co.uk/beads-c491/porcelain-beads-c190/porcelain-animal-bead-4-p1419

I added it to some silver plated chain and combined this with some Swarovski stars and Millefiori hearts and round beads.

All of the beads were attached to the chain with headpins. You can buy these from most jewellery supply shops: http://www.beadsunlimited.co.uk/Headpin-SP/bo4095?sid=2750#item2750. A headpin is basically a thin stick of metal with a flat end at the end to stop beads from falling off. You thread it with beads and then cut above the last bead and create a loop using round nosed pliers. then you can attach them to a chain or an earring finding.

While searching for animal beads I came across these cute ceramic fox beads from Eljo's Habedashery on Folksy: http://folksy.com/items/2549281-3-x-Ceramic-Fox-Beads.

A friend of mine really likes foxes, so I thought some fox based jewellery would be a perfect gift for her. I began by creating some beaded Kumihimo using seed beads. I used colours I thought would tone well with the foxes. I glued the ends of the Kumihimo to some end caps and attached these to a chain.

I then threaded a fox bead onto a headpin with a bead at the bottom, to stop the fox from sliding over the end of the headpin. I attached this to the necklace using some ordinary sewing thread and some glue.

To match the necklace I attached the remaining two fox beads to some earwires using headpins and added beads to match the beads in the necklace.

I also made this necklace and earring set using the same methods as for the fox set. This incorporates a longer stretch of beaded Kumihimo.