Beadtime Stories home page of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough free pattern

BEASTIME STORIES: Home Page of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough http://www.eascarborough.com

SPIRAL CHRISTMAS GARLAND NECKLACE

This Christmas I found a good source for plastic Christmas lights online. I bought several sizes and colors and a couple of finishes. This is the fanciest one as far as the strap went. If you haven't done a lot of beaded straps, I recommend learning the spiral stitch for a comfortable, flexible, light strong strap that looks really cool too. If you use the right beads, it looks very much like a miniature Christmas garland. I used a variegated strand of size 8 green beads for this particular look (though it says size 11 in the instructions, which will make a thinner but still pretty garland) and size 6 metallic gold beads for the accent beads. I separated out the darker green beads on the variegated green strand and used those as the core beads, using the other shades of green for the embellishment beads. I used 3mm miracle beads I got from The Bead Factory for my holly berries. I also used the largest size of Christmas bulbs available from http://stores.ebay.com/PEANUTWHOLESALE for this necklace. Although my directions show how to add a button and loop closure, as I did on the shorter and more delicate version of this necklace, I actually prefer a necklace I can slip over my head. This one is about 26" long and I simply wove the ends back through the core on the opposite side of the strap and knotted three times to make the closure instead of doing the button and loop as shown in the DIRECTIONS.