A charming turn

I have a couple of books awaiting review at present, but due to the pressures of the course work I find it hard to fit in actually trying books out, which is what I like to do. Last weekend though Anna was bored and I'd finished the washing up with some time to spare so we settled down with '100 beaded flowers, trinkets and charms' to give it a good go. This book has the charms all photographed against cute backgrounds in little scenes which meant I could easily direct Anna to the fairy and fairytale pages to choose something which I felt sure would appeal. I had a necklace which I had previously beaded but wasn't quite the right colour to take further so we decided to add a charm to this- nothing much to loose. The book gives directions for using fine gauge wire to make charms which are clearly charted and ranked by ease of construction. I didn't have any such wire to hand so winged it using beading thread. This did actually work fine though keeping everything flat whilst I sorted out the tension was a bit fiddly. It did mean however that my charm is soft enough to not scratch the skin and is very light. 

Although Anna chose colours and read the chart for me I don't think she could have quite managed the threading but I think a young teen crafter would love this book to pieces. The charms are quirky but nicely detailed and like I say the themes mean that putting together a project using several charms would be really good fun. I'd love to do a hair comb with the gnomes and toadstools. I can certainly see Anna and I adding further fairy like figures to this necklace and making it really special. The book is £10.99 which with a few packs of beads and some wire mean that you could acquire a new skill and some mighty cute little fan-dangles for less than £20. Pretty good huh?

In other business I also had my rouleaux tubes signed off. They were fiddly to turn until I found a trick with a bodkin. I know there's a special tool but as this is my first turning of Rouleaux I wasn't sure I wanted to invest. I am coming to the end of a few projects so should have plenty more to show and tell soon, hopefully including some more book reviews.