Paper Bead Bracelet Tutorial

By Monique Liedtke of My Little Shoebox

 

As much as I love to create layouts and cards, sometimes I love to create something else more! So for today I chose to show you how to create paper beads to make a bracelet.

 

Let’s get started!

 

First we start creating the paper beads.

 

 

1. Gather your materials to create the beads: scraps of paper (I use scraps from the Up in the Trees collection), scissors, trimmer, knife & ruler, glue stick, tooth picks and either glossy accents or crackle accents (or nail polish).

Mliedtke mls bracelet 1

 

 

2. Cut a few strips of paper of at least 7.5”long and 0.5“ wide. Because I want every bead to be different I cut a few extra strips, but 4 would be sufficient.

Mliedtke mls bracelet 2

 

 

3. Cut your strips at a length of 7.5”.

Mliedtke mls bracelet 3

 

 

4. Use your knife and ruler to cut the strips diagonally so you get triangles:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 4

 

 

5. Now roll the top of your strip of paper (the wide end) 1 time around the tooth pick and use your glue stick to glue the rest of the back of the strip of paper.

Mliedtke mls bracelet 5

 

 

6. Roll the paper completely around the tooth pick like this:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 6

 

 

7. Repeat this until you have 8 or 9 beads (for my arm 8 is enough). Because you didn’t add the glue to the top of the paper you can easily slide the bead off the tooth pick:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 7

 

 

8. Because I don’t want to damage my bracelet when washing my hands I covered the beads in a little bit of crackle accents (glossy accents or even nail polish will do too of course):

Mliedtke mls bracelet 8

 

 

9. When using crackle accents your beads look like this:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 10

 

 

10. To let the beads dry in stuck them in a piece of styrofoam:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 9

 

 

Now we come to the second part of the tutorial: creating the actual bracelet!

11. Gather the rest of the supplies: (glass)beads from your stash and elastic beading cord):

Mliedtke mls bracelet 11

 

 

12. String the beads on the elastic cord (I use a double beading cord so my bracelet is stronger). For my arm I needed 8 paper beads, 8 metal beads and 8 glass beads:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 12

 

 

13. Tie the ends of the beading cord together and your bracelet looks like this:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 13

 

 

And on my arm it looks like this:

Mliedtke mls bracelet 15

 

 

That’s it!! You’re done! Isn’t this a fun way to use your scraps???

 

 

Btw, I want you to know that this isn’t my own idea. I got the inspiration from a book I downloaded on my Kindle recently: “101 Crafty Gifts” by Chris Thomas.

 

 

Have a great and creative day!

 

Monique

 

Blog post:  http://mylittleshoebox.typepad.com/my-little-shoebox/2012/08/tuesday-tutorial-up-in-the-trees-bracelet.html