How to Make a Beaded Lizard Keychain

If you are looking for fun bead crafts to keep your kids entertained, you should try having them make a beaded lizard keychain. This keychain craft is super easy to learn, even if you or your children are bad at bead crafts. The beaded lizard bead crafts can even be sold for profit, and may help turn your child into a young entrepreneur. My friends and I used to make beaded lizard key chains all the time and we sold them at flea markets and local fair. It was a lot of fun and I'm sure our mothers loved it because the bead crafts kept us busy during long summer days. Making a beaded lizard is by far one of the most entertaining of the bead crafts. Kids and adults can make a beaded lizard together and have a little bonding time while using their creativity to the fullest.

Materials:

2 yards of ribbon

Several pony beads in various colors (two pony beads should be black-these will be the eyes for the beaded lizard)

1 Key ring

1. First you'll want to make the beaded lizard head. Fold the ribbon in half to find the center. Slide a pony bead up to the center. There should now be two strings of the ribbon hanging down from the pony bead-one string on the left of the pony bead, and one on the right side of the pony bead.

2. Slide two pony beads up onto the left string. Take the right-hand string and slide it through the holes of the pony beads. The left and right strings will basically switch sides while the pony beads stay in place. This is the only stringing technique you'll need to use with the pony beads during the whole project. Once the three pony beads are on the ribbon, they should form a small triangle. Add a black pony bead, followed by a colored pony bead and another black pony bead onto the left string, and pull the right string through the pony bead holes as you did earlier. Now you have made the beaded lizard eyes. Add two more colored pony beads on the left side and again, pull the right string through the pony bead holes. Now you have created the beaded lizard head and neck.

3. Create front legs for your beaded lizard by stringing five colored pony beads on the left side. String the first three of the pony beads into a triangle as you did in the beginning of the beaded lizard project. This will be the left leg. Repeat this process on the right side.

4. To form the body, string three pony beads on the left string and pull the right string through. For the next two rows of the beaded lizard body, use four pony beads. Make the final row of the beaded lizard body with three pony beads again, and string the right side ribbon through all the pony beads. Then, repeat step 3 to form the back legs of the beaded lizard.

5. Now it's time to make the tail of the beaded lizard. String two pony beads on the left side and pull the right string through the pony bead holes. Now string one pony bead on the left side and pull the right string through. Again, string one pony bead onto the left side and pull the ride side through the pony bead. Repeat this process until you think the tail is long enough. When you're finished with the beaded lizard tail, tie the end of the left string and right string together in a knot. You can tie a key chain onto the ended of the beaded lizard tail if you wish.

You can use different color pony beads and even create patterns on the beaded lizard with the different colored pony beads. You can also vary the beaded lizard bead crafts by making each beaded lizard a different size. To do this, simply use more or less beads, but keep the proportion of pony beads used the same (if the beaded lizard tail is twice as large as the example above, the head should also be twice as big).