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Painting, Designing and Creating Your Dough Bead Jewelry!

Hi! Are your dough beads dried, cooled and ready for the next steps? If you didn’t see our first blog post on Making the Dough Beads, click here. You’ll need to make the beads before you move on to this part.

*Please Note*: For this second part of our dough bead jewelry art project, in addition to the decorating materials for the beads, you will need some kind of stringing material, ribbon, or beading wire on which to put your beads.  If you don’t have anything suitable at home, these can be easily found online from Etsy, Amazon or Michaels. 

Ok, here we go!

STEP 1:

Take out what you have to decorate your beads – paint, markers, glue, glitter, even crayons and colored pencils. Just a note: acrylic paints and markers work especially well on the dough beads. And, if you do use glitter, you may want to paint a light coat of white glue over the glitter (when it has dried onto the bead) to set all the tiny, shiny pieces onto the beads.

Materials used

STEP 2:

Decide what kind of jewelry you will make with your beads – necklace, bracelet, anklet, ring. Based on what you want to make, color and decorate your dough beads. Do you want a bracelet that is all yellow like the sun?  Then color everything yellow! Maybe you want to make a rainbow? Then color your beads every color under the sun! Once colored and decorated, set your beads aside to dry.

Coloring the beads

STEP 3:

Get the string, stretchy string, ribbon or wire you will use for your jewelry piece. Cut the string and knot one end so your beads will not slide off when you are stringing them. Or tie a bead to one end to stop the other beads from sliding off. 

*Please note*: The length of string you need will depend on what you are making and the material you use.  A general rule of thumb for string length is:

Necklace:  

  • Non-stretchy string: cut 18-25 inches, depending on who will wear the necklace. 
  • Elastic cord or Stretchy string: the length can be shorter, but no less than 15 in.  

Bracelets:

  •  Non-stretchy string: cut at least 10 inches long to allow for tying and untying.
  • Elastic cord or stretchy string: cut between 6-8 inches, depending on wrist size.

Rings:

  • Non-stretchy string: measure the diameter of the finger and add a little for tying.
  • Elastic cord or stretchy string: cut 2 ½ to 3 ½ in.
Bead tied to one end of the string to stop the other beads from sliding off

STEP 4:

Lay out your beads on your work space before you start to string them to determine the order and design of your piece. Once you have something that you like, start stringing!

Order and design of piece.

STEP 5:

When you have strung all the beads that you want to string, take the two ends of your piece and carefully tie them together, or tie another bead to the other end of your string to stop the beads from sliding off that end.

Voila!  Your homemade dough bead jewelry is done and ready to be worn! Congratulations on your hard work and creativity!

Final piece

Share with us a photo of your finished piece on our social media pages!  What did you think of this project? Give us a comment below!  Let us know, too, if you have other project ideas you would like to share with us or that you would like us to try.

Thanks!

Posted in DIY, Kids Activities and tagged ,