Fun Rolled Paper Beads

If you read a lot of craft blogs, you probably already know about making paper beads.  I think it is such a cute fun way to make unique beads, and you can coordinate them to any project!  As long as you can find coordinating paper that is.

I apologize in advance. I don't have an overabundance of pictures of this project.  About five minutes in to this project my hands were covered in Mod Podge, so I decided it was in my best interest not to put my hands all over Stephen's fancy expensive camera.  I'll try to be descriptive though, just in case you haven't heard of paper beads already :)

For this craft project I cut skinny strips of scrapbook paper.  I think they were maybe a quarter of an inch wide, and the whole length of the scrapbook paper, tapered to a point at the end. Different shapes of paper will make different shapes of beads, so feel free to experiment with non-triangular strips!

I think this would be way easier to do with a wider strip, but I wanted my beads pretty small.  I rolled my paper up around a toothpick applying mod podge to the paper as I went.  I tried to only put it on the inside at first, but it occurred to me it didn't really matter where I put the mod podge, since I'd be rolling it all up and coating the bead in the stuff when I was done anyways.  So go ahead and get the podge all over everything - it won't be a problem!  One thing you do need to be careful of is not to glue the paper to the toothpick.  I tried to slide the bead back and forth on the tooth pick every few rolls to make sure it didn't stick.

After my beads were rolled up tightly, I slid them off of the tooth pick and put them on my specialized paper bead drying device (one of my rolled felt pincushions with pins sticking out of the sides).  Once they were on their pin skewers, I gave them a coating of Mod Podge so they would have a nice solid outside.  You can sort of see in the picture how the orange and read beads haven't dried quite yet.

Once they are dry you can use your beads for whatever you want!  I used mine for wine glass charms!

This is the set I made for myself.  They are kind of yucko because I used a black gel pen to mark my cutting lines on the scrapbook paper.  They were pretty obvious when I rolled them up.  Ooops!  Didn't think of that!

I made another set for my sister - the picture is kinda blurry, but it's all I got! They came out much better since I put care into the cutting lines.  I'd go without cutting lines at all, but I don't really trust myself to cut "freestyle."

Now I don't have to worry about some gross face drinking out of my wine glass!  Unless it is a color-blind gross face I guess...

Cheers!!