Beaded Snowflake Christmas Decoration Tutorial

We have another festive tutorial for you today, this time on how to make a beaded snowflake which you can hang on your Christmas Tree or wall as a decoration. Once you’ve made one, you may be tempted to make a whole collection of them!

Gather your materials…

You’ll need a selection of beads in different sizes (white or silver round or faceted round beads, fire-polished beads and metallic beads will all work well). You might want to use the following but feel free to experiment!

• 6 x 10mm white mountain jade beads
• 6 x 3mm white round beads
• 12 x 4mm round silver beads
• 12 x 2mm silver metallic spacer beads
• 12 x 4mm silver fire-polished faceted beads

You’ll also need:

• A few coils of silver tone wire that will be sturdy enough to make a structure, yet flexible enough to bend. (24 gauge or 26 gauge wire should suffice.)
• Wire cutters
• Round nose and flat nose pliers
• Jewelry glue

Trim off three lengths of wire to roughly the same size (between 6 to 8 inches). Then take two pieces of the wire, wrap one length around the middle of the other and pull tightly, so that you’ve made a structure with what looks like 4 pieces of wire coming out from the center.

Take the third piece of wire and do the same – wrap it around the center and pull tightly, so it looks like you now have 6 pieces of wire coming out from the middle. This will form your snowflake structure.

At this stage, it’s a good idea to flatten down the “knot” in the middle with your flat nose pliers and dab on a little jewelry glue on both sides of the “knot” so that the wire won’t move in the next steps. Wait around 15 minutes before proceeding!

How to secure the middle:

When twisting the wires together in the first two steps, apply strong jewelry glue at this stage to the center of the piece where the wires cross over. E6000 is a strong industrial strength jewelry glue that you could try for example. Apply it to the front and back of the “knot”. Then wait until the glue is completely dry and the wires are secure before following the next steps. An alternative to making your own wire structure is to use a pre-made snowflake wire form. These are readily available on the internet for a few dollars.

Now for the really fun part! Thread your beads onto one of the wires, in whatever order you like to make a snowflake design. Keep in mind that your bigger beads probably won’t sit perfectly in the center when the other 5 wires are complete, so it’s worth starting with a small bead (we used a metallic spacer bead that would sit well in the center), then add your bigger beads afterwards.

Once your first wire is complete, make a loop at the end with your round nose pliers to stop your beads from falling off.

Move to the opposite side and repeat steps 3 and 4 to make another beaded strand. Be sure to follow exactly the same pattern as in the previous steps.

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Continue this for the other 4 wire strands until you have a completed snowflake! Don’t worry if your snowflake wires have become bent in the wrong places during the process. You can simply bend the snowflake into the shape you desire once complete.

Add a piece of stretch magic invisible cord, string or a piece of ribbon to one of the looped ends, so that you can hang your snowflake up as a decoration!

We hope you enjoyed our beaded snowflake Christmas decoration tutorial. Please take a moment to share this with your followers on social media!