Festive Napkin Rings and Special Offer!

Welcome to this Friday's Crafts! I thought I'd do something quick and easy today, partly as its been a long and busy day for me! Part of this morning was spent in School teaching a class of 6/7 year olds to play hand bells to accompany their song in the Carol Service...great fun...please pass the ear plugs?

For the Napkin Rings I used 12" pipe cleaners, or chenille sticks, as they appear to be called nowadays, and some funky beads. I don't expect you'll all have the time to rush away to South Africa to get similar beads, but never mind about that!

The size of the beads will probably dictate how many you string onto one pipe cleaner, also, whether you want to conceal the pipe cleaner, or have part showing, as I did.

I bent the pipe cleaner into two loops, pushing one end into a middle bead...

...and then the other end into the same bead...but the two ends can easily go into different beads if you want a wider ring. By pushing the ends into beads, I covered the ends of the wires, which I was afraid might catch on the napkins and snag threads...an important consideration as I intend using the good damask at Christmas.

An alternative Napkin Ring decoration is to twist greenery around a pipe cleaner...

...then loop the pipe cleaner into the correct size...

tuck in the ends...

and twine some beads or sparkles around everything.
You'll notice here that I actually ended up with the Ring too small for all the extra bits I added, so be sure not to do the same. Beads actually take up more of the middle space than one thinks.
Also, greenery won't keep between now and Christmas, so that would add to the last minute jobs.

Finished Napkin Rings!

I thought that as a December Special I would offer a couple of 'freebies' to anyone buying from my Etsy Shop during December, so I've put a notice to that effect in the Shop.

But then I thought that since you, my long suffering Followers, are there for me all the year round, you should have something extra!

So for any Followers buying anything at all from my Shop between now and the New Year, as well as the other things, I'll include one of my Crochet Brooches as well.

(Please remind me that you are a Follower when buying, so you get everything!)

Howzat for bribery and corruption!!

(Would I make a good Politician???????)

'Tee Hee!' as Ladydi would say...!!!