For my birthday last spring I got a present from my sister in law and her family; to choose lampwork beads from Babs Beads and Design. Susanne, lampwork artist and friend of sister in law C, makes little works of art out of glass and I particularly like her hearts. A few days ago I finally managed to choose and order some beads and when they arrived yesterday I immediately crafted an idea I got the other day.

I’ve bought a few sample packs of photo and print paper at Kjell & co, since they cost next to nothing and contain a few fun paper styles I’m too cheap to buy full packages of. Among other things they contain t-shirt print paper and I got the idea to make necklaces with printed text on them – I love music (who doesn’t) and the lyrics to music are always important to me and I would love to carry lyrics as visible decoration too, since they decorate my life so much.

For a while I couldn’t do much about it, I couldn’t find narrow enough cotton ribbon and the textile print paper won’t stick on satin ribbon, and also none of the designs popping around in my head really made me want to sit down and do anything about it. But the other day I found 3 mm wide white cotton ribbon, surfed on Babs Art fire page and voilá knew how I wanted it.

So here it is: official Christmas necklace of 2009!

Christmas lampwork heart with lyrics ribbon.

Working with the textile transfer paper was a little trickier than I had thought (or, actually, I hadn’t thought much about it at all). Since you can’t see the printed side once you put it down and then placed the iron over it, tiny things like 2,8 mm text can get displaced. And when you’re on a 3 mm ribbon, there is no room for displacement. If you think before you do you may get it right the first time. If you’re more like me – try first, think, try again, repeat until it works – here’s a tip about what I’ve learned:

The right way, the wrong way and the first try,

It’s spring in some parts of the world, for example in NZ, where B lives with her husband C and their kids A and LB and also Nana D. All of them except for C also celebrate their birthdays in spring, which is a good excuse to make necklaces for everyone!

Everyone, that is, but C. There is just nothing I can make out of the stuff I have in my beadboxes that would not look silly on this man – or, come to think of it, most men. I’m not very conservative in what men and women should or should not wear and do, but scroll down the gallery and try to imagine any of the designs on any grown man. Jewellery on men – absolutely! Beaded jewellery on men? Not so easy…

Anyways, for the others I toted together some things. For A, who is 4 and, I gather, a rather cool dude and big brother I made a necklace of faux grey stone and silver-and-turqoise desert sun beads. It has a magnetic clasp so there is no danger of it hurting him if it should get stuck on something while he’s climbing and running around. Little sister LB is 2 and for her I made a Y-shaped necklace in pink and white with a swarovski heart and pink lilies leading down to it, and for their mother B  an affirmation ring necklace for Love. Nana got a longer version of one of my own favourites that I hope ‘goes with everything’ for her too.

Hope you have a lovely spring and summer, guys, I miss you!

Multicolored fresh water pearls for Nana

For the kids and B