Making Beautiful Beaded Christmas Ornaments (Guest Post)

Everyone loves handmade ornaments, especially for Christmas.  It is an activity you can share with your children, or give them to do by themselves or just get pleasure from making ornaments yourself that you will appreciate. Handmade Christmas ornaments are perfect as Christmas gifts and can be made at a much lower price than buying decorations. My favorite handmade Christmas gifts are beaded ones. You can find the beads available very easily at most craft stores or you can go online and find high quality beads more cheaply than the stores- I would use this option for gifts rather than decorations, but the choice is yours. 

If making ornaments with children, you want to stick to a simple style, such as making a snowflake, from wire and beads, the children can decide the beads that they want to use and thread them on to the wire.  When working with beads, an adult should supervise small children and also make sure the wire ends are secured. Children could then add ribbon to hang the decoration. Other beaded ornaments include using a Styrofoam ball with beads and long dressmaker’s pins; children can paint the ball in the color of their choice and when dry add beads using the pins.

For more complex designs I enjoy making beadwork designs – you can find patterns available on line. This requires the use of a needle and thread; the beads are arranged following the pattern using a technique known as brick stitch. In this work you use colors to make the design stand out. This style of working beads produces a flat beaded object in the shape of say a Christmas tree or an angel or whatever pattern you have followed. These kinds of bead designs are great to add to earrings or badges and to use as bon bon (cracker) gifts or decorations.

Christmas Ornaments Guide has information on all kinds of Christmas decorations.