Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this Julie with Beadaholique.com and I have a very fun project to show you today this is an exclusive kit that we've put together and it's a set of 6 snowflake Christmas ornaments and I've gone ahead and made 6 with the help Sarah Diamond, our president and at the end of this video its gonna show a clip of her and I having a great time putting these together. So watch at the end of the video for that but to begin with I'm show you how to do this I want to show you that they're all different styles you can make now in nature snowflakes have six sides and they're all identical and that's what we've tried to mimic here as well. You can see the variety of beads and the variety of designs that we came up with. A lot you can do and so when he finish this kit you will have all six snowflakes made and we're going to give you everything you need to make them and all the supplies. What you're going to get in the kit is an assortment of small plastic non breakable beads which of course is what you want to hang this from a Christmas tree and your also going to get a medium assortment of beads. So you can see that there's rounds, there's smooth rounds, bicones, a whole bunch of different beads in here and it's gonna be a good mix and then you're also going to get an assortment of large beads and you can see they come in a variety of sizes as well and with the large beads we made sure to give you each particular style in increments of six. So if you wanna do something like in nature where the snowflake has six identical sides you'll have enough of the large statement focal beads So make sure that all the sides match and then your going to get 6 wireframes. Now in terms of tools, tools are not included in the kit but you can use a variety of tools that you might have on hand already. You can use a pair of round nose pliers a pair of wire looping pliers or even a pair of chain nose, I don't necessarily recommend a chain nose. It's not ideal but if you're not a jewelry maker and you have a pair of fine nose household pliers such as what you're seeing here, these are actually for jewelry but you might have something with a similar tip you can get away with it for this project as well. But the round nose or the wire looping is gonna be best I actually recommend the wire looping for this particular project so let's get started first off you might notice I don't have my normal beading mat I have a dark towel. I have this because one it grips the beads and two because these are clear I can better identify the shapes and makes it easier to work so I'm going to go ahead and start by taking one wireframe. I'm going to show you how to make one of these I'm going to start by placing a small bead onto one of the wire branches I'm choosing a small bead because you'll notice when you get down towards this middle where all the branches meet it's pretty tight in there. You wouldn't necessarily want to put a large bead I can show you really quick because if you put a large bead next to another large bead this is what's gonna start to happen. it's not gonna lay right. I recommend starting with a small bead but the fun part of this project is there really are no rules, you can do whatever you like I have my small bead I'm going to start adding beads and this is part of the fun is experimenting. Now it does work nicely, if you go ahead and put a small bead between the large and the medium size beads they work as great spacers they really help to know bring that whole geometric look of a snowflake when you do that, you'll see we've put small ones here I'm just placing beads wherever I want. Do try to mix up the shapes a bit now when you get to about three eighths of an inch you're gonna wanna stop I could add another small bead here I wanted to but I wouldn't go much further than that. That's one idea now I look at it, that an idea, I'm not sure if I like it or not so what I'm gonna do is before I make my loop because once you make your loop its permanent and then take a little piece of tape and just put it over that wire tip. So now if I were set on this design I would go ahead and just mimic it on this arm as well but I'm not totally. So I wanna see if there's another design that I like this is a small bead and it's tapered so it works well for one of those middle beads I want to do a round bead like that, this is really part of fun you just get to play. You might want to do these with your kids if you do just make sure that they're of an age where they're not gonna swallow any of the small bits. Always use adult supervision of course and then for the finishing touches you'll want to work with the pliers of course keep an eye on what they're doing because there are a lot of small beads maybe I want to try that bead going in that direction I can fit another little something on top so put it on there, take it off, have fun now I'm looking at... and that is going to happen a lot and we're gonna leave that in the video because that is very common, that's why you want to use the tape and I knew I would do that at least once in this video alright I'm trying to recreate what I had, see if I can remember think I'm changing it up a little bit but that's okay play around with beads, do you like it going on that way or you like it going on that way just experiment alright so now look at what I've got going and I'm going to either decide do I like one of them or both of them which one I wanna do and looking at this I actually think I really like this one, my first one. So I'm going to slide these guys off and I'm going to mimic what I had to begin with. Pay close attention to what you're doing when you're making these identical, it's very easy to put the wrong bead on once you made that loop at the top you can't really go back it can help if you hold it like this so that doesn't flip over like you saw in the beginning of this video a little tiny guy what I'm going to do with this one I know this is the design I want now I'm going to make a loop I'm going to start by showing you how to do it with a pair of round nose pliers most everyone has a pair round nose pliers that's why I wanna show you how to do it with them, you're gonna go ahead you're gonna grab the tip with the pliers and you're going to rotate grab it and rotate until you make a loop and that is going to hold those beads in place now I'm gonna go back and I remove the tape from my other branch and I'll show you how to do this with a pair of wire looping pliers grab the wire about a eighth of an inch from the top and compress and then rotate you see that was easier because it is grabbing the wire more if you wanna be really neat and tidy make sure all your loops are going the same way we didn't necessarily do that when we were just playing. We were just having fun and we let them go any which way but it's up to you. I'm going to do another wire branch I'm going to show you how to do this one with a pair of chain nose now this is not necessarily ideal. It's not going to give you that nice loop but if this is all you have you don't have to buy other tools and this is a good option for you. I'm just gonna grip it and I'm going to bend, making a curve and I'm going to compress it which can be a little challenging basically I'm just trying to make it so the beads don't fall off. So you notice it's not as neat, it's not as tidy but it does work and those beads are secure on there. If that's all you have and also what you wanna work with that's totally fine as well I'm gonna finish this snowflake. These little beads can be kinda hard to put on just because they're little hard to see but they definitely work. I mentioned earlier that the large beads come in increments six, the small and the medium do not they are an assortment but there's quite a few of each style and in the assortment however when you do get down to your fifth and your sixth ornament I would recommend go ahead and making sure that you have enough of each bead you want to use before you actually go ahead and make that loop it's best to be cautious I'm going to show you again with the round nose plier I rotated and get a better grip on it and I just finished up that loop I'm going to show you one more time with each tool just so you can actually see it. If you wanna fast forward through this section if you already understand what you're doing feel free to do so like I said there is a section at the end that shows Beadaholique.com's President Sarah Diamond and myself having a lot of fun spending an afternoon putting these together, we just fast forwarded through it but you can see us dropping beads, playing with beads, having fun, deciding on the design, it's a great way to spend the afternoon you might have a cookie decorating parties around this time a year, why not have a ornament decorating party they are great on the Christmas tree they're great to have as a hostess gift, hang in a window you can even attach them to a present. It's a nice little Holiday touch I'm gonna go ahead and use the wire looping plier again they really are easiest, if you're gonna make a ton of these might not be a bad idea to pick them up because they make it so easy to do this one more branch I didn't use any on this one but you'll notice that there are some AB beads in here as well which have a little bit of a shine color to them those are fun and one more demo with a chain nose pliers they're not all that easy to use for this application but you can grip it and bend it and keep bending it that actually worked a little bit better this time so there we have a complete snowflake. We have plenty more beads to make all of our other stuff with and you actually have a lot left over when you're done for another project and how do you hang this guy well not included with the kit but you can easily I'm sure find around your house, you can do what we did in my family at Christmas is we took a paperclip, we bent it outright, we then just put it through, curved it over and suddenly we had a great hook to go on our tree you can do that or if you've got a little bit of ribbon or twine put that through one of the loops and then just tie a bow, there's another option now you can hang it again from a package, from a tree, from a window all great easy ways of hanging these. So that's how you make a snowflake and just one more time I wanna show you some of the other designs we came up with and then you can watch the rest this video showing us actually making these snowflakes. Here's the one I just did in the video here is another style these were all done with beads from this kit fun chunky one I hope you enjoyed this and have fun watching the rest to the video Thanks for watching and if you want to pick up this kit go to the Beadaholique.com under our exclusive kits and this is the set of 6 snowflake Christmas ornament kit. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
