Here are the gifts I made this year.
Stained glass lentil bead necklace by Cate van Alphen
This lentil bead necklace is a descendant of one of my earliest necklaces, and was actually a Christmas gift for the same sister. I hope she agrees it’s an upgrade. This one was a very easy baby to make :).
The next necklace was for a Boxing Day birthday. looks simple but it took a huge amount of time to make.
Egg bead necklace by Cate van Alphen
The first issue what the fact that the beads are ivory and white, so I had to work really carefully to keep the polymer clay clean and free from specks. The next issue, which I really felt when it was time to sand, is that the beads are…
Egg bead necklace by Cate van Alphen
BIG! Each bead is about the size of a bantam egg and there are a lot of them to make a long continuous necklace. As they say on the cookery competition programs: “Something this simple needs to be executed perfectly.”
Faux ivory egg beads by Cate van Alphen
For the surface decoration of the beads, I made a marbled cane using ivory, lots of white and transparent polymer clay (I had to redo some of them since my first cane was too yellow – doh!). Here is a tutorial I did for a marbled cane which in turn was based on this tutorial for mother of pearl.
Fulgorine 
LOVE the white beads – simply stunning. 🙂
You’ve done well! Lentil design challenges conquered, and that ivory veneer – wow! Faux ivory/bone is tricky, I agree. My first attempt came up a luminous flesh tone. There must have been some fluoro red in the leftovers I used. 🙂
LOL – red is pretty powerful! Of course my prototype came out perfectly, but I only had a tiny bit of cane so I had to make something to match, grr.