Beaded Ornaments!

Well Christmas is all set up. I still have some tweaking here and there to do, but all the boxes are put away. Phew! That was a lot of work.

I have 8 trees this year. Some are not so big. Others are. I'll be sharing them next week, but with all of these new trees - I needed some new ornaments.

Luckily, I thought ahead last year and scooped up a bunch of plain glass ornaments last year in the after-Christmas sales that Michael's had. Sometimes I'm smart like that.

Even longer than that was when I bought this beaded ornament book.

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I don't remember when I bought this book exactly, but I know I've had it for at least 3 years. The instruction in this book is quite good.

I have watched my mom make these beaded ornament covers for a while now and I've always thought they were pretty cool looking. The unfortunate part? She's never made me any. Harumph! Well I can make my own.

And that's just what I did. I really only like 3 designs in this book, there are 5, and so I've made two of them, but one I made two different ways.  I'm thinking that my next ornament will be a fully enclosed one, but here's what I've made so far!

 This one is actually the 2nd of this ornament that I've made, but this time I used all silver beads, except for the larger beads on the dangles. There I used some iridescent crystals. Luckily, by the time I got to this ornament I'd gotten the netting pattern down and the ornament went fairly quickly.

 Here's the very first ornament that I ever beaded. The netting is a mess on this one. I misread the directions and made it far to crowded. Luckily, because of the nature of netting - you can't really tell. This one is a mix of pearls and silver. As you can see - I'm working with what I have.

Here's my favorite ornament so far. This is the 2nd ornament I made, and this one is far more delicate looking and feminine. Love all the dangles on this one. This is another mix of pearls, crystals and silver beads. I want to do another one of this style.

I also want to try doing the netting out of bugles rather than 4 seed beads. I think it will look a little more polished. We'll see how this adventure goes. :)

I can't wait to show you some of the ornaments that I'm making for H's tree. I'm still waiting for the paint to dry enough to put them in the oven to finish curing them, then I can get on with the fun paint treatment.

See you guys tomorrow!