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Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Cardboard "Bead" Necklaces

I recently saw this fabulous post on painted bead necklaces by fellow Rockin' Art Mom ArtBar Blog.  Her students painted such beautiful wooden bead and cardboard necklaces.  I was really intrigued by the idea of using corrugated cardboard to make "beads," so I thought I'd give it a try myself.  Last weekend our town held its annual Lemon Festival, so I painted myself a lemon necklace to wear there.  And since Halloween is always on my mind, I painted myself a skull and bones necklace too.  Here are the results!

Let's Make Some Cardboard Beaded Necklaces!


Make Cardboard Beaded Necklaces!

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Aren't they cute?   Let's get making!



Materials:


Let's Make them!

1.  Doodle out a design for your beads on a piece of paper.  Then, cut it ou.


Make sure the holes run through your cardboard beads

2.  Trace your design onto a piece of clean, corrugated cardboard.  Check the cardboard's orientation!  Make sure that the long holes run across your beads, since that's how you'll string them with yarn.


Paint your corrugated cardboard beads

3.  Paint your cardboard beads!  (I just used tempera paint and made sure not to water it down because I didn't want the rigidity of the cardboard compromised.)  If you're going to wear these outside, I recommend painting the back of the beads too.  The cardboard is pretty light, so it will flip around as you wear the necklace.  You don't want to have the brown cardboard back exposed.


Use a skewer or tooth pick to string your cardboard beads onto yarn

4.  Now is time to string your beads!  Art Bar's original painted bead necklaces post suggested using needles, but I ended up taping a skewer (or a toothpick) onto my yarn.  Then, I jiggled the skewer/ tooth pick through my beads to string them.


DIY Cardboard bead necklaces or bunting!

5.  Once you've got a whole bunch of cardboard beads strung onto the string, you could make a necklace (or a bunting- wouldn't that be cute for Halloween?)


And here's a photo of me actually wearing the necklace to our local lemon festival. 
(Unfortunately it was windy outside, so the necklace kept flipping over.  I didn't paint the back, so the cardboard kept getting seen.  Oops!)

Proudly wear your DIY Cardboard Beaded Necklace out!


Happy Making!

DIY Cardboard Beads to Make Necklaces for Halloween!


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