Sewing-themed necklaces

Morning ladies.  I hope you all had a good weekend?  I had a lovely day on Saturday, we had a meet up of the EMMQG in a gorgeous little village in Derbyshire, home to Guild members Mandy and Lynne.  Despite being bullied by Ange most of the day, it was so nice to be with other sewingy-type ladies who all accept me into the Guild despite the fact that I'm almost a quilt-virgin.  I got to see some amazing quilts in person and eat some wonderful food.  And cake.  Chocolate cake.  The only downside of the day was the horrible migraine that came on as I was driving home.  I was in bed by 8pm on a Saturday night.

We have a little birthday-swap going and three ladies had had birthdays since I'd seen them, or had birthdays coming up, so a present was in order.  But what to give extremely-talented quiltresses who would surely laugh at my wonky sewing?  Handmade jewellery...

The cute little sewing-themed charms came from ebay and it took me ages to track down plenty of different ones!  I decided to make each necklace the same-but-different.  So we have a black version.

The round beads inside the silver donuts are glass millefiori, just beautiful.

Then we have a pink version.  Those almost-round beads are made of paper.  I didn't make them but making paper beads is on my list.  No surprise there then, there's not much that's not on my list.

I used purple crystals with this one.

And finally a yellow and green version.

This one also has glass millefiori beads and some lampwork ones on the sides.

A necklace as a gift requires a gift box. I am rubbish at buying things like that so I decided to make them, how hard could it be??  I should have realised at that point!  Some of the charms had come in a dinky little pizza box, so I opened it out to use as a template.

I used scrapbooking paper stuck to card for the first trial.  I thought the card would give it rigidity.  It didn't quite work.  I think the problem was that the template is made from thick card and my card wasn't as thick.  Version 2 was made from card alone, slightly thicker card.  It still wan't great.  It kind of worked, but I did have to tape it shut!

As this wasn't working, I decided to draft up a standard box with lid.  I made the base.  I made the lid a few millimetres smaller.

Except I didn't, the lid was the same size as the base!  I finally gave in and measured the base before making a lid and had a workable box.  Clearly I forgot to take a photo though!  Ladies, I do hope you forgive me crappy boxes!