DIY Christmas Gift - Girls Bracelets

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving day! Ours was pretty nice, very calm and quiet. I even took some time over the weekend to put up our Christmas tree. I love how it looks now. Well, overall I just love Christmas. So talking about it has everyone started with the Christmas gifts? If not here comes a wonderful option that Megan from One plus one equals Six was nice enough to share with us. It's an awesome idea for handmade gifts for girls. It's actually a great way to include your children in the activity.

Here is Megan's story of how she and her girls created these pretty necklaces and bracelets:

"Hi I'm Megan, visiting from One Plus One Equals Six and I'm very excited to be here at Estylo Jewelry sharing one of my projects with you. I am a mother to four loud and lovable children, who enjoys cooking, crafting and who is also trying to create DIY decor for our brand new house. With Christmas only weeks away here is a quick jewellery project that the children can help you with and it would be perfect for the gift-giving season.

Over the weekend I was going through a couple of boxes when I located a few of last year's Christmas presents. I started packing up some for our stuff from the rental two days after Christmas so it was easy to choose the gifts that would travel easily, especially as we were leaving our rental in early March. So while I was going through one of the boxes I found a few small presents the girls had been given and I thought that it would be good to swap these over for some of their old and tired toys.

In one of the boxes I found a beading kit that Uncle Nathan and Aunty Renee had given Mackenna so I hid it away so that the girls and I could work on it during the week while Mackenna was at home and not at Kindy. So that is how I managed to do my first ever craft project with both my girls today. Just after lunch I sat down with both the girls and I showed them what I had for them to do.

I was greeted with smiles, happiness and loud voices. There were ten little bags of various wooden beads and three lengths of pink elastics, so I promised the girls a necklace each and a bracelet. As the girls are only eighteen months apart they have to do everything the same, this means they eat at the same time, they each the same food, they have the same coloured plastic plates and they generally want what the other has even when we only have one of them. Mackenna will regularly tell strangers that they are 'twins' and people generally believe them.

So I spilt the beads up evenly so each girl had the same number and coloured beads. I asked each of them to choose a few larger beads and we made these beads the feature of the necklace and bracelet. I had to help both of the girls thread the beads on as the activity was aimed at older children. The other thing I had to do was to stick a large needle into each hole so that the girls could thread the elastic through the beads to create their necklaces and bracelets.

I held the bead while the girl's threaded them.

Viveca's pushing the elastic into the bead.

Mackenna having a turn.

I didn't fill the elastic with a whole heap of beads because I wanted to save some of the beads for the bracelet. I threaded the remaining beads onto the elastic, I then measured what size each bracelet needed to be and I knotted them so that they wouldn't fall off their arm. The girls are very happy with their handy work and now they are running around showing off their special jewellery.

This is what the finished pieces look like and I'm glad we did this together because it meant that each of them got some one on one time with mummy and they even got to make their own special necklace and bracelet.

Mackenna's Necklace.

Mackenna's Butterfly Bracelet.

Viveca's Strawberry Necklace.

Viveca's Lady Beetle Bracelet

Viveca likes her pieces so much that she wore them to bed and Mackenna has put hers in a plastic bag so that they don't break. Maybe mummy might be able to make herself something pretty one day."

Thank you so much Megan for sharing this wonderful gift idea! And how great that the kids can participate on this. I'm sure that any little girl (and some not that little) would love them as gifts. Please remember to visit Megan's blog to see more awesome DIY projects, recipe ideas, etc.

Hope you enjoyed it and till next week!

Sandra.

**Important: The original post and all images are property of Megan from One plus one equals Six. To see original post go here**