Napkin Bling

This holiday season you will all be sitting around the table with good friends and close family. Sharing laughs and eating lots of food. You grab a piece of your favorite chocolate drizzled cheesecake and just as soon as you open your mouth to take that first savory bite, the chair you are sitting on spontaneously moves and where does that chocolate drizzled piece of cake go? In your lap.

What do you do? Why you grab the napkin. It's pretty much instinct. It's like when you yawn, you close your eyes because that's just what we, as humans do. We blink and we grab napkins.

So, since the napkins will be a big hit this season why not include them in your table setting and give them a little 'bling bling'. -Yep, that's right. Bling-blingin' napkins. Those little pieces of cotton which we sometimes take for granted, deserve to be a little festive this year. Not only for our own slobbery-selves, but also for the very dramatic look you are going for to complete a beautiful holiday table-scape.

The tools we are working with here are a pair of scissors. Some simple thread... which you can easily buy in any color at the craft store at a very low price, and some beads.

Any beads will do. One of the great things about this project is you can match any style, type, shape and color bead to the color scheme you are going for this holiday season. For my example I am showing you some silvers and blues since silver and blue will be included into [my] holiday color palette. The best part? -These beads are also pretty inexpensive too and Micheal's, AC Moore's and Jo-Ann's usually have some pretty nifty sales on beads around this time of year.

Cut your string to whichever length works for you. Make a loop and knot at one end of the string.

Once you finished stringing your beads onto the string, make a double knot at the end.

Take your last bead [try to make it a little larger than most of the beads on your string]. Pull the string through the bead and tie it around the bead and into a double knot like shown above.

Take your string of beads and wrap it around that little cotton number and take the larger bead, put it through the loop knot you made in the very beginning.

Turn your napkin over and see your sparkly beads in all their glory. They especially sparkle under the lighting of the dining room!

And if your feeling extra adventurous, go ahead and make these napkin 'rings' with stretchy cord, crimp beads and barrel clasps or any other clip you can attach to both ends. This one shown is my 'Thanksgiving' themed napkin-bling.

And once your guests are done with their mouth-wiping, you can give them these little napkin-hooks you made with the stretchy cord, clasps and crimp beads, as little 'gifts'. They can easily be worn as bracelets.

Will for SURE be a hit with the kids!

Make one, two, three, four... TEN, around one napkin. The possibilities are endless and this project is so unbelievably easy, and if you have kids... let them join in on the fun! Makes for a great craft activity.

So go ahead. Go get your napkin-bling on!