Gift tutorial: Japanese paper pendant

This is a quick and easy tutorial to make a Japanese paper pendant that can make use of any scraps of paper left over from making my tea bag folding cards, the tutorial for which can be found here.  I have attached my pendants to keyrings, which I think will make great stocking fillers for Christmas!

© 2015 Jennifer Richardson

You will need:

• Pencil
• Scissors
• Silicone craft glue
• 1 X Cabochon setting (I am using a 25mm square antique bronze setting)
• 1 X Glass cabochon (I’m using a 25mm X 25mm X 7mm transparent square)
• A scrap piece of Japanese paper (at least big enough to fit your setting)
• Cord/key ring fob to hang pendant from (I’m using an antique bronze key ring fob)

1. Take your scrap piece of Japanese paper and place your glass cabochon on top of it and move it around to find a section of the paper you particularly like. I am using a 25mm X 25mm X 7mm transparent square glass cabochon to fit a 25mm square setting.
2. Holding the glass cabochon in place with one finger, take your pencil and draw around the cabochon.
3. Using your scissors, cut out following your pencil outline giving you a piece of paper that should fit your cabochon setting.





© 2015 Jennifer Richardson

4. Spread a thin layer of silicone craft glue to the inside of your cabochon setting.
5. Place your piece of paper into the setting right side up. Press down lightly to make sure the paper has stuck and there are no creases or air bubbles. Here I am using a 25mm square antique bronze setting, but you can use any shape, size or colour. It doesn’t have to be a pendant setting. You may wish to make earrings or cuff links instead.
6. Give the back (flat side) of your glass cabochon a polish to remove any finger prints and apply a thin layer of silicone craft glue. Place the glass cabochon into the setting on top of the paper and press down to remove any air bubbles. Polish the top side of your cabochon.
7. I have attached my Japanese paper pendant to an antique bronze key ring fob matching my cabochon setting. To do this I used a pair of pliers to open the jump ring at the end of the key ring chain and fed this through the loop of the pendant then used the pliers to close the jump ring again. If you want to wear the pendant as a necklace, however, you may wish to thread a piece of cord through the pendant loop instead.



© 2015 Jennifer Richardson





I bought all my supplies for making my Japanese paper pendant key rings from eBay.

Bundles of Beetroot

A few weeks ago my Dad gave me a load of his home grown beetroot.  I love beetroot, but being the only beetroot fan in the house I would never have gotten through it all if I’d pickled it and kept it for myself and there was far too much to try and use it in chocolate cakes, which is my other favourite thing to do with beetroot.  So I scoured the web for a beetroot chutney recipe I liked the look of.  In the end I decided to roughly follow this one on the BBC Good Food website.

I had more than 1.5kg of beetroot though so decided to use approximately 1.5 times the ingredients.  I thought processing that quantity of beetroot would leave the kitchen looking like a murder scene!  However, by peeling the beetroot into a colander in a basin of water in the sink wearing disposable gloves and using Maggie the Magimix to chop everything I actually kept things reasonably tidy.  What I didn’t factor in though was what the volume of the ingredients would be in increasing the ingredient quantities!  I started of using the large stainless steel pan I usually use for making jams and chutneys, but it soon became apparent that the pan was going to end up a little too full!  The only thing I had that was bigger was my enamel-lined cast iron Le Creuset casserole dish.  I had to use Google to find out if it was OK to use that, which thankfully it looked like it was so I tipped everything into that instead.  This also gave me an opportunity to use the giant wooden spoon and spatula for jam and chutney making that my Mum had given me for my birthday.

Whilst the chutney was bubbling away I sterilised the jars.  To do this I washed the jars and lids in hot soapy water and then put them in the oven pre-heated to 140⁰C.  They need to stay in there for at least 15mins, but I tend to leave them in longer until I’m ready to use them.

Once the chutney was ready, I took the jars out of the oven and spooned the chutney in.  I managed to fill 14 jars, which was nearly my entire supply of spare jars!  As I can’t eat that much chutney I will be coming some away as Christmas presents.  I bought some dissolvable labels on EBay to label up the jars and used some squares of Christmas fabric to cover the lids.

© 2015 Jennifer Richardson

And after all that I still had 2 giant beetroots left, one of which found its way into a chocolate and beetroot loaf and the other I cooked in the microwave and ate!