Years ago, a friend gave me a key chain with my name beaded on it. I have used that key chain for years, and even bought a new cord to remake it when the original cord broke.
It’s easy to find when I drop it in the bottom of my purse or diaper bag. When I’m out, I often tuck the keys into my pocket and leave the beads hanging out, which makes it easy to snag the keys from my pocket when I’m juggling groceries or library books or a sleeping toddler.
One day, I looked at it and thought, “The girls could make a beaded name key chain.”
So we went in search of alphabet beads, cord and key rings. I ended up finding a kit with everything included at our local dollar store, though we had extra alphabet beads by doing that (which the girls let Jade string randomly on a bracelet).
Sunshine and Lily have done other beaded projects and needed little help with this one.
Jade wanted in on the action too, and I was quite impressed that once I had shown her what we were doing, and helped her with the first few beads, she was able to do it herself. She made a bracelet and was quite proud to wear it for the rest of the afternoon (until it broke because we’d used the light elastic cord from the kit).
I helped the girls tie the cord onto their key rings, then got them each to line up the beads in the order that they wanted to string them. Sunshine had to restring her name beads because she put them on backwards the first time.
Once they’d finished their key chains, they each found a set of old, toy keys to put on the key chains. Their keys are now kept safely within their purses, along with their coin purses and other valuables.
Cost: $5
Difficulty: easy (suitable for ages 2-7)
And because most people carry keys, this would be a great gift idea for any number of people—teachers, aunts, friends, Mom, grandma, etc. Or the key chain could be used as a zipper pull or bag decoration.
Here’s a few more ideas (affiliate links):
- Black plastic alphabet cube beads (150 pieces)
- White plastic alphabet cube beads (150 pieces)
- Plastic alphabet bead kit with cord and chain (85 pieces)
- Alphabet bead friendship bracelets kit
- Melissa & Doug deluxe wooden stringing beads (over 200 pieces)
I’m linking up with Made By You Monday for this post.
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