Description
The Santa beaded box – or Father Christmas beaded box if you prefer! – contains 2 drawers and 2 containers. It is about 5″ high and 5″ wide. Each drawer is about 0.5″ and the two box spaces have 1″ openings.
Materials
You will need the following materials to make your Santa beaded box:
- Around 110g of size 10 Delicas
- About 15g of size 11 seed beads
- One 4mm pearl
- Your choice of beading thread
Beading thread is a personal choice. You want to use something that will give you good tension. For me, this is Fireline, but you may prefer something different.
I sell all the supplies for this project here in my beading supplies department.
You can also follow this link to get a complete kit.
If you wish, you can use size 11 Delicas to make your Santa beaded box. This will just be a little fiddlier to make. You will also need to scale the seed beads down and use size 15. I think this will make the box about 2/3 the size.
Experience and Techniques
You are going to be working mainly in Peyote stitch. So, I have assumed you are already very comfortable with this technique. You will be using tubular and circular Peyote with increases and decreases.
If you need a little reminder, you can download free technique tutorials from this website.
I have also used a little basic brick stitch. Again, I have assumed you know the technique, but you can get free tutorials if you need them.
Lastly, you will use some freeform – and your imagination – to add the little characteristics and design details. I have guided you through all this in the pattern. But I am also leaving you to interpret as you wish.
If you want to find out more about any of these techniques, I have some useful blogs here>>
This is an advanced level project.
About the Santa Beaded Box
Back when I was making my beaded Nativity figures, it occurred to me that I now had the skills to make a Santa. So, slowly, I began to envisage this little character.
I wanted to draw on some of the beaded box techniques I have been developing. So, I thought how fun it would be if Santa’s boots were to pull off (open – they don’t actually detach!) to reveal storage space in his legs. I had already developed this drawer technique in my Fire and Water and Camera beaded box designs.
That would mean that Santa needed to be sitting down. So, I began to envisage him packing his sacks with gifts, ready for the Big Night! That immediately gave me two more box spaces. One in Santa’s body and one in the sack.
So, this was my dream when I took out the beads to begin making my Santa beaded box. This design has been a journey of discovery where I’ve learned even more about joining flat Peyote shapes to create three-dimensional beadwork.
So, I invite you to take this journey too and extend your beaded box skills even further!
