I woke up with an idea this morning and immediately set to work on making it. This simple Olympic rings craft could be used for a table decoration for a party or just for fun. It's not suitable to hang up because the chenille stems don't hold their shape due to the weight of the beads. You could make an even easier one to hang up, if you can find all the right colors of chenille stems.
Start with 5 colors of regular pony beads: royal blue, yellow, black, green, and red. I had chenille stems in most, but not all, of those colors; you could also use white chenille stems (or whatever color you have) for the entire thing, since the chenille stems are hidden by the beads.
You need two chenille stems for each ring. Twist the two stems together with about an inch overlap. Then add beads until each ring is filled with beads with about an inch of chenille stem showing at each end.
Twist together the blue, black, and red chenille stems; these will stay closed. Hide the remaining ends.
Lay the blue, black, and red rings on the table. You will thread the yellow and green rings through these rings as follows, starting from the left side ring:
Put the yellow stems under the black, then over the black, then under the blue, and over the blue. Now you can join the yellow into a ring.
For the second one, put the green stem under the red, over the red, under the black, and over the black. Join into a ring. (See illustration below.)
If you look closely at an image of the actual Olympic rings, they go over and under in this same manner.
In a previous picture, you can see that I've cut several short lengths of chenille stem. You will use these short lengths to attach the ring together where they meet up (see below). Hide the leftover ends as best you can, or you can trim them once you're sure you've got them adequately twisted.
Once you're done with all the joining points, you can make any adjustments to the rings to make them more circular, and voila!
