I love accessories! When I was in college, I had a friend who seemed to have accessories to go with E.V.ERY.THING. she wore! (At that point, I barely knew what an accesory was. Seriously.) I love that a lot of the clothing and accessories right now have flowers in/on/around/etc… them. So pretty & feminine!!

My sister told me about this idea using cheap-o beads, flowers, and ribbon to make a necklace. (Yes, I know that sounds horrid, but hang with me here.) As soon as I heard that idea, I started keeping my eyes out for beads like that, but couldn’t find any that were cheap.

Now, what do you get when you put these things together?

1) Ikea.
2) After Christmas sales.
3) Old bulletin board materials.

(see end of post for answer ;))

My hubby and I made a super fast trip to Ikea a couple weeks ago, and I noticed this beauty:

and he was just sitting there in the Christmas sale section.
He was waiting for me. I just know it.

One of the sales associates said she thought it was .25 cents/box, but the little cash register rang it up for $1. Oh well – I took 2 of them for $1 each, packed them away in a bag, and forgot about them…

UNTIL

I was working on something else, got sidetracked when I saw these little beads again, and decided to make myself a necklace. 🙂

It is really a very simple and fairly painless procedure. (It only gets painful when you try to document everything with a camera. grrrr.)

The main things I used were beads & flowers. (But you’ll also need a hot glue gun, needle, and thread.)

I’ll outline the steps for ya:

1. Hold the big strand of beads up to you and decide a) how long you want the strands & 2) how many strands you want. It might help to think of what you would wear it with before you cut the beads.
   
2. Attach the two “end beads” together…
   by sewing through the string like this:
   
   and you’ll end up with the ends looking like this:
   
3. Put the beads on and decide where you want the flower(s) to be. Before you attach your flower to the beads, you may need to snip off part of the flower “stem.” Just make sure it’s not so long that it will stick out farther than the beads and poke you while you’re wearing it. 🙂
   Fire up your hot glue gun…
   and glue the flower(s) on the beads.
   (sidenote: this method is kid-approved too! As soon as my little girl got up from her nap and saw my  flower necklace, she said, “Ooooohhhhh!” and started pulling on the flower. Lo and behold, the flower stayed put. :))
   
4. Now, go bring a little sweetness to your life by wearing your bling and lovin’ the fact that you just made it for a lot cheaper than you could have bought it!
   
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