How To Make An Austrian Crystal Christmas Ornament

	The Beadsmith Cordless Thread Zap II Thread Burner Tool SKU: XTL-0106 $16.49
	Standard Size Beading Crimping Pliers (For 2x2mm & 2x1mm Crimp Beads) SKU: XTL-5200 $13.09
	Xuron Micro-Shear Flush Cutter Pliers - Cuts Up To 18 Gauge Wire (1mm) Thick, (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-5600 $16.85
	Fiskars 5 Scissors for Beading Cord SKU: XTL-5700 $5.99
	Wildfire Thermal Bonded Beading Thread .006 Inch - Frost / White- 50 Yd SKU: XCR-8933 $10.29
	Soft Flex, 21 Strand Fine Beading Wire .014 Inch Thick, Satin Silver SKU: XCR-5141 $37.29
	English Beading Needles Assorted Variety Pack SKU: XTL-3004 $4.20

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this Julie with Beadaholique.com and I want to show you how to make a holiday ornament using a lovely Swarovski crystal pendant and then beading the actual hook you're going to use to hang the ornament on the branch you're going to choose a pendant I have some various shapes here which are very much holiday inspired. There's a lovely cross, a baroque pendant, and a star, snowflake, a moon some are in clear crystal others have a lovely AB finish which gives them more color. This is almost reflecting like orangie pink. It'll vary all the way to blue so after you've chosen your actual pendant you want to choose the beads that you're going to use to create your actual hook I've got some four millimeter bicones here. I've got some that are just in crystal and some are in crystal AB I've got some 11/0 seed beads I pulled a couple other samples for you to see as well. There's of course wide variety of seed beads to choose from. I think for the holidays when you're working on the crystals it's nice to have a foil lined seed beads in crystal and crystal AB maybe some gold and coppers really you're only limitation is your imagination the tools you're going to use is going to vary depends on the style of kook you make to secure your pendant to the tree I've got a thread zapper here, crimping pliers flush cutters, a pair of scissors and then most importantly I have the actual stringing material and again this is going to really vary on what type of hook you're gonna make and I have some Beadalon wildfire which is a very strong beading thread. You're not going to just use like a Nymo or a KO, something stronger. These are a big heavy and they're really very fragile so you wanna make sure that they're secured tightly and that you're beading don't come undone I have some soft flex beading wire. I'm going to show you how to use both of these There's a couple different ways you can make your loop that's gonna go around your branch the first one I want to show you is actually gonna be the easiest and that is just taking some beading wire cutting a length about twelve inches placing a bead stopper on one end and just stringing a strand of beads. I did about three and a half inches of beads and I just alternated three seed beads, a bicone, three seed beads a bicone really very simple when I got to the area where I actually want to string it through the hole in my star I went ahead and did five seed beads just to give myself some extra room so that it could slide easily through that whole and then I made the other half amir image of the first so what you can see now is when you hold these up they're gonna be even and the way I put the bead onto the beading wire very very simple here you don't need a needle or I just used the end of the beading wire picked up my beads and then slip them down when you get to this point, you've got your star captured in the middle you want to remove both bead stoppers I want to show you something I did here on the first part of this. Take it off just so I can show you how easy this is so I've been doing a pattern of three seed beads, a bicone, three seed beads go up at the top which was my starter and instead of doing three seed beads I added a seed bead a silver crimp tube and a seed bead now what I want to create my loop because I'm going to take the other end of my beading wire and I'm going to thread it through the first couple beads all the way to the bicone so I went through the seed bead and the crimp tube the other seed bead and the bicone you can see what happens when I do that that forms this wonderful loop I wanted to make my loop about three-and-a-half inches long which meant I had to string about seven inches of beads and then what I want to do before I crimp my crimp tube I want to take the other end of my beading wire thread it through the bicone there we go and just pull snug these are so easy to make and they look so stunning they'd make a perfect hostess gift this holiday season or if you give ornaments to family members as gifts or even make one for yourself so once you got these two wires coming out opposite ends you're just gonna take your crimping pliers place them over the crimp tube make that first crimp rotate do the second part of your crimping and what you're going to see that is not going anywhere. That's really strong. Take your flush cutters go right up to the bicone in my case but you can string these seed seeds you don't have to add the bicone I'm trimming off the excess wire and there we actually have a finished ornament so that's one way to do it now another way, a little bit fancier, is I actually did some bead weaving of the daisy chain and I did a daisy, a bicone and daisy, bicone all the way through and you'll see I did about seven inches worth and we have another video on Beadaholique.com showing you how to actually bead weave daisy chain, if you'd like to do this method I thought this would look really pretty with a snowflake and you can see I've got my bead stopper still on my daisy chain and I actually have my wildfire thread still threaded on my needle so what I want to do is I want to go through that hole and in order to do that is instead of making another daisy for adding another bicone I'm going to place five of my seed beads onto needle pull them down go through the hole in your crystal take the other end of my daisy chain and I'm gonna place my needle through the first bead of my first daisy and the second one pull that through that those two ends meet and now and I'm actually going to go all the way through my daisy that first daisy again you'll see it got some little gap right there. That's fine. I'm going to tighten that up in a minute keep going through your daisy pull it tight you really want make sure you have a very strong hold here so what I'm going to is at this point go back through the seed beads the five seed beads strong through the hole. Pull it. and at this point go back through my other daisy that's on this end which is technically the last daisy I beaded from the other side go back in reinforce the thread through the first daisy we beaded on this one we're going back the opposite way the last daisy You want to start tying off your thread make a simple overhand knot pull that tight continue going through your daisy I actually like to use surgeons knot as well. I'll show you how to do that make sure this is really very well reinforced just in case your tree is perhaps standing on a hardwood floor or something you wouldn't want this to drop to the ground. I'm going to do instead of just going through it once I'm going to go through twice pull down and I'm a believer in reinforcing so I'm going to go through my daisy I will take my thread zapper here we go now I'm going to go back to other side which has my bead stopper on it and take me needle off of my scrap piece of thread now I'm gonna pull my stop bead out rethread my needle onto this tail going to do the same thing on this side and go back to through the daisy Since I've gone through this daisy already a couple times it can get a little bit tight when I get to the point I'm going to start going through this bicone see here go back through that daisy and that's where the thread are getting a little thick and tight go through the bicone do a knot keep going three more seed beads and I a like to place knots sporadically do a double one here make sure it's good and tight keep going weave in that tail back into the bead weaving I might just go back through that bicone one more time and really you don't have to do it exactly to this design. You can do whatever you like. Just make sure that your tying off your thread in multiple places. You reinforce going back through the beads which are within the hole of your crystal and that you feel that you've got a secure knot you just use your thread zapper or a fine pair of scissors remove that thread and there you have another ornament so these are two different styles ornaments you can make and they would make a lovely gift or a keepsake for this holiday season