I thought that I'd do a little "giveaway" this week ... I'm so happy to be going to New York in a couple of days with my friend, Karen, to see a taping of the Martha Stewart Show and I thought that this would give me something to look forward to when I get back. I'm going to giveaway the "funky glass bead bookmark" featured above. I know that a lot of my family and friends are new to this "blogging thing" so I'll give you a couple of options to get into the draw ... 1. leave me a comment after this post or 2. join my group "followers" (see the right hand side of the blog). If you are already a follower - you are already in the draw!!! I'll draw the winner on Saturday morning and post the winner's name on my blog.
Here's a little story about my funky glass bead bookmarks ... I've made these for years ... they are so cute and a great way to show off so many of the beautiful glass beads that I have collected. I made few hundred of these little bookmarks last year as a part of my therapy after my brain surgery. Making these bookmarks helped me physically and mentally ... and it was something that I wanted to do so it was fun. I worked on them for months and when I was done, I gave away all of the bookmarks to the hospital staff to thank the many doctors, nurses, therapists and volunteers who took such good care of me.
Just in case you would like to make one of these funky glass bead bookmarks for yourself ... here's how ...
you will need a variety of different sizes of beads, a couple of links of chain, head pins, jump rings, book hooks and a few jewellery making tools like pliers and wire cutters. I buy all of my supplies at Michael's and my local bead stores and I have been known to re purpose beads from necklaces and earrings on these bookmarks too.
The first thing that I do is to create a few bead grouping on the head pins. There is no right or wrong way to do it so just have fun arranging a few small beads with a medium sized bead until you like what you see ... then twist the end of the head pin to form a circle (see picture above). Larger beads can just be added to the head pins by them self and then twist the end of the head pin to form a circle ...
once you have a bunch of beads on the head pins, you will need to attach a small length of chain to the book hook with a jump ring. Use your pliers to close the jump ring and then cut the chain with wire cutters so that the chain is about 1/2" long ...
I usually add about 3 or 4 bead groupings to each bookmark ... lay the beads out on either side of the chain to see how you want to position them. Attach each bead grouping to different links on the chain using jump rings and your pliers to connect them ... and that's it!
Warning!!! ... these are really fun to make and you will soon be finding yourself making these as gifts for everyone - family, friends, teachers, etc and you will be adapting the designs for different holidays. I gave these out (with candy) to the children on our street for Halloween last year ... the bookmarks had pumpkin and ghost charms mixed in with orange and black beads ... everyone thought that they were really boo-tiful!
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