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.