12 Days of Christmas Jewellery

Hi Everyone
Today, is the first day of a new idea for the blog. I'm going to introduce twelve pieces of jewellery which will be Christmas presents for friends and family or maybe for me !
I've taken 4 different bead designs and will make up the 12 designs using combinations of the beads. Some of the designs require a very basic level of skill and some are a little more challenging.
I thought, I would start the little series with the core beads and the clay I used to make them. Part of the series will include a gift wrapping idea - so you will have a complete hand created set of gifts by the end.
Here are the core beads in a selection of colours :



My starting point was to decide on colours and I've chosen the traditional Christmas colours of gold,silver, red and green. However, all the clay colours have been mixed in some way (with each other). You will need 4/5 different clays. I used Premo Sculpey brand for this project.




Combinations of my basic beads will form jewellery presents - either earrings, bracelet or necklace in various colours. Some of my presents will go to friends of friends, so I wanted each gift to be a little different from the next (in some way). The difference may be small eg a colour or a size. I've also taken into account that many people have very little time to spend on big creative projects at Christmas time so all options will be quick to make.

So far, I've produced my core beads and will aim to produce all the jewellery items over a few days. I will give an estimate preparation time for each item based on my own experience this week. The core batch of beads took me about 90 mins to make form start to finish plus baking time of 30 mins. I suggest making the core bead batch to both save time and allow for creative combinations as you construct the jewellery.
One 56gm bar of polymer clay in each colour is needed to make the core bead batch - I have clay left over and the clay cost me less than £10. If you search around Ebay there are lots of bargains to be had.

Tomorrow, I will go into detail about making all the core beads and the first jewellery item which will be a simple star stud earring. I hope you will be inspired to make along with me.

Thanks for reading.