If You Like It, Put a Ring on It

I must be an adult now. All of a sudden, things that never had any appeal now seem indispensable. Like cloth napkins. Because we are one of the few couples in our circle without kiddos, we find ourselves entertaining large gatherings more and more frequently. Out of the blue, those paper napkins that were just fine for the first 30+ years of my life started to feel inadequate. Down right embarrassing, even. But the lack of cloth napkins was the least of my dilemmas. In order to do justice to cloth napkins, you need napkin rings (or some fancy way to fold them, but that feels like way too much effort right now). So, off I went to peruse the internet. Yikes! Napkin rings are at least $4 a pop for the ones I really like? And I want at least 12. In the grand scheme of things, $48 plus tax is not that much, but I can’t bring myself to spend that on something that is, let’s be honest, really just table jewelry.

So, how could I go about satisfying this want without breaking out my debit card? Upon inspection of my craft drawer, I found wire, wooden beads, mother of pearl beads, and crimp rings. This was a promising start.

Since I didn’t have 12 large mother of pearl beads for the centers, I decided to make a set of coordinating napkin rings. I used a small plastic tube to determine the approximate size I wanted the rings to be, then cut two wires of equal length, positioned a large bead in the center, slid two crimp beads on either side, then crimped them. That made the rest of the process much easier.

Then I needed to figure out a pattern. I ended up putting two wooden beads slightly offset from each other next to the center bead, then connected the wires with a fresh water pearl.