Fun to String Beads! – Craft Gossip

This wonderful craft kit is sure to keep your little one’s hands busy for hours! It’s called Paper Bead Fun from Hearthsong. These are large (3/4″ diameter) paper mache beads in bright solid colors Your child can decorated them however they wish with the five color markers that are included in the kit. After they have decorated the beads, they can then string them and create funky cool jewelry. This craft is recommended for children ages 5 and up because the beads could be a choking hazard.

If you are shopping around for an older child try Paint Ceramic Beads by Alex Toys. It is an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award winner. It comes with two large heart ceramic pendants, 16 square ceramic beads, 10 other shaped ceramic beads, seed beads, paints, brushes and cord. Because you do need to bake the pieces once you have painted them, adult supervision is required.

And Mom, if she makes something for you, please wear it with pride. We want to encourage our children to be creative and to enjoy themselves, even if that means wearing a chunky bracelet with smiley faces all over it. 🙂

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The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.

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