Supposed-to-be Prayer Beads

My family was planning to go to pilgrimage in the end of December 2014, therefore I was having this idea to make prayer beads for my mom & my sister.

However with lack of skills on making jewellery, I found out the prayer beads for my mom looks more like a necklace. To avoid same problem with the prayer beads for my sister I tried different method. Luckily this time was successful. She told me that she didn't want her prayer beads to look like prayer beads, in other words she would want to wear them as necklace on daily basis if possible without looking like a religious person. This is to explain why the following pictures looks less like a "normal" praying beads. What is normal anyway? Normal would mean "banal" or "ordinary" so not normal would be special or extraordinary, right?

Here they are:

This one's for my mom (just arrived at her place recently)..

This one's for my sister (she likes something which is more playful, nothing with serious appearance). Both arrive at my mom's place after (about) 2 weeks. I hope they like it, I will have to wait a couple days more before they finish their pilgrimage tour.