This was a great workshop as everyone went away with a necklace, at least one bracelet (most people had 2) and at least one pair of earrings - not bad for £13 - 15 and a fun and relaxing couple of hours beading and chatting!
Bev and Donna took one table each after we'd selected from 10 different colours of glass beads and laid them all out on our beading boards - which helpfully show how long the necklace or bracelet that you are making needs to be with inch and cm markers.
Bev introduced us to Tiger Tail (the first of many amazingly named beading ingredients!) which you have to be careful not to kink accidentally as you can't get it out again! We carefully threaded our beads onto the Tiger Tail after we had made a kink in it, threaded on a Lobster Clasp and fastened it by squashing a fixing bead with pliers. Once we had finished threading all the beads we then fixed a Jump ring (see I told you they were cool names!) and the necklace was complete!
We then moved onto the bracelets which used heart shaped glass beads. It was a similar process to the necklaces, although you could either use Tiger Tail and fix on a jump ring and T-Bar fastening or use elastic. If we were using the elastic Bev and Donna passed on a useful tip - when you knot the elastic, use a blob of nail hardener/varnish to make the knot more strong and durable.
Finally we tackled earrings which were again using heart shaped beads. A simple process - we just used pins and pliers to fasten the bead to earring fixings and twisted a hook to make the hoop to connect the two together.
All in all a great evening of crafting with some lovely results - thanks Bev and Donna for such an informative and relaxing evening.
