I spent Saturday afternoon hosting a 10th birthday beading party. I designed 2 simple necklaces and one bracelet for a group of (mainly) 9 and 10 year olds to make. I set all the beads out and after a lot of oohing and aahing they set about choosing the design they wanted to make, once that decision was made they had to choose their beads... that took a LONG time. It looked like it was quite painful for some of them deciding between colours and some opted for a rainbow of beads when choosing one or two proved just too hard.
They all worked really hard, listened to my instructions and asked questions when they weren't sure. You would never believe that 10 girls could be so quite, you could have heard a pin drop between questions and the occassional sigh and giggle when things went wrong. A lot of them found the crimping near the clasps and the covering of wire a little too tricky so I helped a bit but the majority of the work was theirs.
After finishing the necklaces they all put them on and went for a break, cake, present opening and some running around. After that they could choose if they wanted to make a bracelet, some opted not too and instead ate more food and did more running and laughing but five made the bracelet. This was a lot quicker as it was a simple beading design and they were all soon outside running off their sugar highs.
It was a great success, the girls had a lot of fun and Katrina (the birthday girls mom) said she was really pleased at how well it went and how much fun they had. I even gave out my details to a couple of people who are interested in doing something similar for their girls. Here's how they took them home.
It's so great to do something you love and have other people love it too. Evie was invited as she knows Brianna and she had a great time, here's what she made.
