Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Paper Bead Earrings

Last fall, I found a tutorial for making paper beads on one of the craft blogs that I stalk. Beckie is seriously creative and I'm convinced she can make or re-purpose just about ANYTHING.

She made beads out of PAPER and then made the paper beads into earrings. I've been on a search for Mod Podge Dimensional Magic since I read her post. I've searched every craft and scrapbook store in Colorado Springs without luck so I finally ordered some online and finally made my own beads out of some of my scrapbooking paper.
I picked up some headpins and some doo-dads (I'm sure they have a proper name) and some earring wires and transformed my beads into earrings. I think they turned out pretty cute!
(Now I finally have some earrings to wear with my gray cardigan this fall and winter, and let's face it, I'll be wearing that sweater next spring too.)
This was a fun, easy, and a fairly inexpensive craft. I spent about $15 (happened to find everything during a 40% off sale) and ended up with enough stuff to make about 12 pair of earrings.

The possibilities are really as endless as your creativity and/or your paper collection.
You might want to avoid doing what Sarah and I did with our first batch of beads. We put the Dimensional Magic on the ends of the beads and inadvertently "glued" them to the toothpick. If you make some beads, only cover the OUTSIDE of the bead, not inside of the rolled ends! You need to be able to slide the bead off of the toothpick once it dries.

I didn't take pictures of the process, so you'll have to check out the Beckie's tutorial if you want to make some. I think these Christmas tree ones are cute. As are these cha-cha-cha ones. There's also a site called Paper Beads that has a ton of ideas.

13 comments:

Deena said...

How crafty! I've never even heard of these. I bet your girls had a great time helping.

O Mom said...

Love the gray. And love Beckie's blog...she is amazing!

Lauren said...

So cute!!! :)

Angela said...

So cute. My girls and I may have to try!

I wonder if we have any mutual friends here. We are a First Baptist Church of Springdale family, and my husband is the director of admissions and PR guy at Shiloh Christian. I'm sure we probably know some of the same people.

Angie said...

Very, very, very cute!!!

The Bowden's said...

Oh my gosh, I LOVE these! So cute and what a neat idea.

Teresa @ Grammy Girlfriend said...

tooo cute...love the look...

Nancy said...

absolutely adorable. love it.

Gretchen said...

So cute! I used to make earrings a million years ago. I think I might've finally sold all my tools, etc. at the last garage sale. Looks like I "need" to go shopping again. Who-da-thunk about paper earrings. Light weight, too!

Amber said...

So So So SO cute.

Infarrantly Creative said...

Those are awesome! Aren't they addicting?!

Unknown said...

Wow! Those are pretty! I might have to make some for the nieces birthdays.

SZM said...

how cute are those!