Beaded Shamrock Decoration

How to Make

1. Join two green pipe cleaners by wrapping two ends together to make a long pipe cleaner.
2. Fold the pipe cleaner in half and make a heart shape on the fold to make the top of the shamrock.
3. Thread green, silver and gold beads around the heart shape.
4. Take the right end of the pipe cleaner and bring it round the middle and back onto the right side. Make a sideways heart shape for the right-hand side of the shamrock. Make sure all the leaves are roughly the same size.
5. Thread through green, silver and gold beads onto the heart shape, leaving a bit of pipe cleaner at the end to wrap around the middle of the shamrock to hold it in place.
6. Take the remaining piece of pipe cleaner round to the left and fold into a sideways heart shape for the left-hand side of the shamrock. Thread through green, silver and gold beads onto the heart shape.
7. Make sure there is a piece of pipe cleaner left to use for the stem. If not, wrap a piece of pipe cleaner to the end as an extension.
8. Take the end of the pipe cleaner and put it through the middle of the top part of the shamrock, fold downwards and then bring back up to put through the top part of the shamrock again to wrap the pipe cleaner in the middle. Now the shamrock shape should be sturdily held together.
9. Glue a gem to the middle of the shamrock. Leave to dry.
10. Cut a piece of green ribbon and put through the top leaf of the shamrock. Tie a knot to make a loop to use for hanging the decoration.

Top Tip

Only add the beads to one shamrock leaf at a time so that you can easily fold the pipe cleaner to make the next shamrock leaf. To create a bigger shamrock, just attach more pipe cleaners together.