quick beaded Christmas necklace tutorial

Have you learned by now, that when I say I will post something "tomorrow", I almost always mean to say, "in a day or two"?  Well, now ya know.

My mom very generously bought all of her grandkids Christmas outfits while we were in Washington last week! We found some great things at Crazy 8 and while we were there I saw some pretty cute necklaces that I wanted to try to replicate for my girls. These are them:

So, I bought some beads and got to work. Making the bow and making it look nice and making it stay, however, proved to be more difficult than I expected, so I decided to just use ribbon and do my own thing. I think they turned out pretty cute!

So, here's what you need:

I got a little thing of the string beads at JoAnn for 2.50. It was more than enough for two necklaces and looked like this:

Cut three strands of beads about 36" each. Then, double it over and pinch the ends, making 14 or 15 inch long necklace. It needs to be big enough to fit over the child's head, obviously. Then, take a piece of thread, double it and use it to secure the strands together, like so:

Pretty simple. Trim those thread ends close and then cut some pieces of ribbon, long enough to have some extra to play with. Layer them and lay them under your knot. Put a dot of hot glue on the bottom of the beads to secure them to the ribbon.

Go ahead and tie your bow after this. After I got it how I wanted it, I used the glue gun on a few spots to make sure it stayed put.

Trim your bead ends when you're done. One last step: To keep the strands from getting messy and tangled, pinch the strands at the top of the necklace and wrap a small piece of ribbon around it, hot gluing it in place.

You're done! Enjoy :)

While I was on Crazy 8's site to get the link, I saw this necklace too:

So cute! Maybe I'll try this one next :)