Simple Christmas Projects – Beaded Poinsettia

I can finally feel Christmas coming – we’ve had our first snow, shop windows glow in different colours and the main square in town has a huge Christmas tree. It seems that despite the economical crisis, that we keep hearing about on the news, everyone is getting ready for the festive period and there’s nothing better than the anticipation of the big event.

There’s still 4 weeks, seems like a lot of time, but this waiting can bring its own pleasures - I love decorating, baking little biscuits, buying and wrapping up presents! So having flicked through a lot of magazines, looking for inspiration, and searched through my head what else I could come up with I decided to make some beaded flowers – poinsettias.

Last summer I was asked to become God mother to my nephew and had to buy a candle for his Christening. I wanted to decorate it in small white beaded flowers. As I had never done this before I looked up on the internet and found an example of something I had in mind on this website - http://www.craftbits.com/

For this project you will need: small red, green and yellow beads, thin flexible wire and a bit of patience.

Instructions: We’ll have to make several red and several green petals – as many as you want. So here we go - cut a length of wire around 30cm for each petal. Thread a single bead onto the wire and slide it into the centre. Push one end of the wire through two more beads. Push the other end of the wire through the same two beads. Now you have the second row of your petal. Work the other rows adding one bead more than the previous row or one bead less – that’s how you can shape your petals.

Be creative – petals don’t have to be exactly the same, some can be bigger, the others smaller. You can also vary the colours – add green beads to the red petals to make your flower look more natural. If you want your poinsettia to be yellow in the middle just finish a few petals making the last petal bead yellow. After you’ve added the last bead just twist the two wires together making stems. Once you’ve made all of your petals twist their ‘stems’ into one. That’s it.

I hope you enjoyed it and that you will find a place for your ‘home grown’ poinsettia – decorate your presents, wreaths, Christmas table…

Lots of Snow

Last night the first snow finally arrived – huge snowflakes were dropping from high above onto the grey tiles in the yard. The only thing I could think of was would it keep till tomorrow? Just in case I charged the batteries for my camera, so that this time it would be different… (the other times I’m referring to are when I see something amazing that I desperately want to photograph and my camera runs out of energy).

I woke up early and heard something that could have been our neighbor scraping snow of his car. Remembering that the weather forecast said today temperature would reach +3C I jumped out of bed, grabbed my dog and camera and ran out to the fields. I was in a hurry, so I forgot my gloves… Would I need them? I thought if it’s going to be above zero then even at 8 in the morning it can’t be too cold, can it? The thermometer outside said it was -7C, but I didn’t go back in, I was so excited!

Here are the photos that I managed to take while my fingers were getting cold and the dog was pulling her lead as she wanted to play in the snow:

In the afternoon I went out again and of course couldn't resist taking more photos of this winter tale: