Sanna makes a beautiful Christmas gift

Hello there, lovely scrappers!! I have been wanting to try this idea out for a long time now - I can remember my mom wearing such jewellery in the 70´s, except her necklace was made out of smooth leather beads. I used to love that neclace and it has been haunting me (in a good way) ever since!!

As I am a paper girl, I naturally chose paper (Sassafras) instead of leather for my jewellery.

 This is how I did these pieces:

First gather your materials together. I used a piece of Sassafras scrapbooking paper for this purpose. Other than that you will need a glue and a sealant (I used Glue n´ Seal from Ranger, as it does both), a paint brush, scissors, jewellery findings for earrings and a necklace and jewellery pliers. For the necklace I used small golden beads, a black fake leather ribbon and lock pieces. For the earrings I needed two fish hooks and two head pins.

First cut approximately 15 cm long "flags" out of your patterned paper. Make sure the widest part of the flag is narrower than the pin so that you have enough space to build the loop later.

Now cover the inside of the flag with Glue ´n Seal.

Then use a needle as a rolling aide and roll the flag into a bead starting from the wider end. If the glue dries along the way, apply some more to make sure the paper sticks properly together.

Then quickly remove the needle from the bead and leave the bead to dry. I wanted to make sure I wouldn´t get any sealant into the bead holes before threading all the pieces together. That is why I applied the sealant in the very end of the process, but if you are careful you could do as you finish each bead.

Now make a  loop in the end of your head pin and combine the hook with the bead part and your earring is done. Repeat for the second piece and the earrings are all set.

Apply the sealant over the paper pieces and let dry. The layer looks quite messy in this picture but when dry it totally disappeared and the finished piece looks really fine from the surface as you can see in the lower photo.

Then off to the neclace. You create the beads the same way like for the neclace, but naturally will need a couple of more :). Then thread them through the leather band and add a bead in between for additional detail. When the band is full, add the lock pieces and cover the beads with the sealant. Let dry. That all! Your present is done in no time!

This is how the neclace looks like when finished. And the best thing is that it is not heavy to carry! And depending on the colours you choose it will always look different!

 You´d be surprised, what gorgeous beads you can make out of very bold, pattern heavy papers; so no more storing those yucky papers out of sight, use them to make beads :)

Hope you give this a try!

Have fun!
Sanna