Design Team

I am delighted to announce that I have been asked by Sara Davies from Crafters Companion and Sarah Millsop from Beaders Companion to become a member of their design teams. But not as we all know it!!!! I have a challenge to undertake and that is to make jewellery out of paper and to make cards with jewellery. The mission is to show how all the paper crafters who have purchased Crafters Companion Cds can see how they can now make jewellery using some very simple techniques. Most of the items used will be from the Beaders Companion website but will also use items from the Crafters Companion website. My box of goodies arrived late on Friday afternoon so this first project has been done very quickly.

Now the 1st challenge;

The wonderful Nigel May is releasing his Christmas A May Zing CD on Tuesday and on the CD are paper beads which I will be using in future projects but for my 1st project I thought I would make something A May Zing...so I printed off 2 of the coordinating backing papers from the CDs and cut them length ways into triangle shaped strips. These were then rolled onto a large needle, a cocktail stick can be used but I needed a uniform finish so the needle was better. A small amount of PVA adhesive is applied at the beginning and you then just roll them up and put another drop of PVA at the end and then put them on one side to dry. At this point I put them onto the tips of cocktail sticks that were standing in some foam.

Once dry I coated them in clear varnish. You can use Spray and Shine available from the Crafters Companion website and even clear nail varnish but for a sturdier finish I used hard glaze wood varnish, clear embossing powder can also be used if thats what you have in your crafting stash. These were then left to dry again.

Once all dry you are ready to start making your jewellery. I had a single chocker length of memory wire so decided to add the beads onto that but I 1st made them into droplets. This just involved the very basic jewellery techniques of creating a loop in an eye pin. I selected the desired paper beads and some gold and silver beads available from the Beaders Companion website. These were then put onto head pins and eye pins and I created 5 pendants to hang from the chocker. The empty gaps were then filled with more of the gold and silver beads and some red bugle beads also from Beaders Companion. I added some more of the paper beads around the chocker and finished it with some simple loops in the memory wire so no difficult tasks like attaching to clasps and crimp beads. So that was the necklace and now for matching earrings and a bracelet.


Again I had some memory wire for the bracelet and just threaded on my chosen beads in my desired pattern and coiled the ends of the memory wire. The earrings were made in a similar way to the pendants on the necklace using and head pin for the bottom drop and an eye pin for the top and using a fish hook earring finding.


I hope that you like my 1st project and if you would like more information about how to make paper beads there are some great websites with detailed instructions.


I look forward to Nigels Launch of this great set of CDs on Tuesday and I will try to post more samples over the next few weeks to give you the inspiration to take up jewellery making. Remember all off the techniques used are very simple and Sarah Millsop has got You Tube clips showing you how to make the loops etc.


Thanks for stopping by and see you soon Cathy x