I started working on this a while ago and have managed to do one. I can hardly wait until school’s done at the end of the month. I don’t seem to have any time to do anything at the moment. Oh well, enough griping.

You may remember that for my Guild’s anniversary exhibition, I made a little flock of sheep. What to do with them now? I could just put them away or make a display, not that I have room for that.

In the past, I made key chains by threading a cord down and back up through the sheep and then adding a split ring. It worked, but the cords wear too quickly. Then I saw some cool headwear for keychains. They seem to just put beads on them, but what do they know? I bought a multi-coloured pack.

Of course, I also had to buy some new beads for this. Really, I did, I didn’t have any large hole beads that would fit on the pole. Sorry about the bad picture, way too much reflection on the left one, and I didn’t want to dump them out. The one on the left is mixed, so there are solids, stripes, crystals and some different textures.

I picked a green keychain to go with the green sheep.

The first thing to do is to make a hole in the sheep. For this, I used a leather awl. It worked quite well; I only had to fiddle a little to get the post through the sheep. You can see that the beads unscrew at both ends. This makes it easier to add the beads on the top and bottom after adding the sheep.

Then add some beads and and screw the ends back on.

I like the way it looks. I need to give him some eyes and probably a nose. None of the sheep or the shepherdess had facial features for the display.

The other thing I want to do is fix some of the ears. I was running out of time, and I knew they wouldn’t be handled, so I didn’t worry about some of the ears not being as sturdy as I would like.  Some of them are too fluffy and underfelted, so they will not last as key chains.

The other thing I bought was a little stand and some cards to attach the keychains to. I hope that it makes them look a little more finished and worth what I want for them.

They are too big to fit in the little bags that came with the cards. I will have to look for some different ones.

P.S. I have not picked a name for the little ram lamb yet. Nothing has really jumped out at me as the right one, yet.