Hey, everybody! Is anyone else absolutely drowning in holiday prep and activities? I’ve been at a slight loss lately because, even though I’ve been beading plenty, it’s all be been for gifts, so I can’t post photos anywhere!

But! We did already have one of my family events where we had a gift swap, so I CAN share these ornaments I made with you.

So, you may remember the ornament challenge I participated in last year where I made three versions of the same ornament to try out different combinations of Christmas-adjacent colors. That was really fun and I do have a history of getting a little nutty with Christmas colors, but this time I wanted to focus more on shapes and less on the actual colors.

The leftmost ornament is one of my SuperDuo Star 2.0 Earrings. Earring patterns make fantastic ornaments, because you just get to follow the pattern exactly and then slap a ribbon or string on it instead of an ear wire. I used the same idea for the far right ornament – it’s just one of my Vistella Earrings! What I really like about this one is that, even though the actually earring pattern is a little big for some folk, it’s the perfect size for an ornament!

The center ornament isn’t one of my patterns – it’s actually just a Russian spiral! I used 4mm glass pearls and 11/0 seed beads with six different colors total. I’ve actually written up a free photo tutorial on how to wrangle a six-color Russian spiral before and you can find it here. The only difference with using 4mm pearls instead of 8/0’s is the number if 11/0’s you use between each pearl (three instead of two).

Anyway, that’s the only thing I’ve been working on this month that I can share yet!

I’m thinking about trying to squeeze in another Clasp Wars post before the end of the year. If you want to vote on which clasp to do next, check out my Facebook page and let me know!