I think that one of my favorite crafts is jewelry making. Beads should be part of any well-equipped jewelry making kit. I love the choice of styles that jewelry making allows you to try. The range of materials that you can use for jewelry making also means that their possible uses are limited only by my imagination. Even though I was not a particularly experienced craftsperson I soon found that I enjoyed jewelry making and created wonderfully original jewelry. Of course, I now wish that I was capable of far more intricate jewelry making but at least I am always improving on the ones I made before!

I enjoy jewelry making using a variety of different materials. It is fun to look at what I have handy that I can convert into pretty jewelry. One of my favorites is using strips of colored paper for paper mache jewelry. My kids love tearing pictures out of glossy magazines and we try jewelry making together, well, almost! They prefer to move straight to the decorating stage and I have found that dried macaroni makes an ideal bead. The tubes of pasta have a ready made hole for threading and can be painted easily. We also use clay quite a lot when jewelry making, probably because kids enjoy molding the shapes. I have to take over the baking part but once
that is done they can decorate and varnish their creations and continue with their jewelry making.

Of course jewelry making is made more fun if you can give the jewelry to other people to wear. I like creating necklaces and earrings to give as gifts. People often appreciate handmade goods more than shop-bought ones, but more importantly I save a fortune with my crafty offerings! My kids like making friendship bracelets for their mates and have recently got into using lettered jewelry to make up people's names on necklaces. A lot of kids wear them round here and also have become interested in jewelry making too!

I use a lot of different materials as a base for my jewelry making. It would probably be impossible for me to remember all of them but I like using leather cord and jewelry metal the most. I have tried almost anything that I could thread a bead onto probably! Nowadays I do not have the time to dedicate to jewelry making that I once did, in fact I probably haven't made anything for over a year due to our latest addition but when she is older I may well teach her the basics too.