Happy Saturday folks! I found a really cool website all about paper beadmaking this week and on it there was a paper bead designer page where you could pick the size and type of bead you want to make and print out the sheet of bead strips for free! Here is what I made with the rainbow texture:
Neat huh? It took a little getting used to. At first it would only print two strips then I changed the settings to make a bead 1 1/8″ wide and for bead type I chose “all over design” and I got nice rectangle bands of color. I cut the strips corner to corner to make a taper. Normally if you roll a strip like that you get a bell shape but you can get an even taper in the center if you trim the wide end of the paper so each of the side angles are equal or just compensate by centering the taper as you roll. No need to make it complicated! I used mod podge to glaze the beads and it worked very well. I was worried that my printer ink would smear (it is an ink jet) but the mod-podge was thick enough to keep the ink from running. I did notice a purple/gray tint to my brush once in a while so I wiped it on a paper towel and kept on podgein’!
I use paraffin wax coated toothpicks to glaze my beads on, the wax keeps the mod-podge from gluing the bead to the toothpick. I stick the pics in Styrofoam to keep the beads from touching anything as they dry. Last weekend I went on a paper bead binge, look I filled my bottle with beads! I was very proud of myself! 🙂
It was a small bottle but still, there is probably 400 beads in there! Now I have a lot of beads to varnish, that’s OK tho, It is a nice chill-out task I can do in front of the TV, much like making the beads, heck who needs relaxation medication? Let’s all make paper beads! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
The Frugal Crafter Blog 
Thank you for the link !! I all ready saw many nice patterns !
Tell me did you print on normal paper or is it on a heavy paper ???
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just normal paper:)
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THIS IS AWESOME!!! I am doing home renovations so I havent been doing anything seriously crafty recently!
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What are you going to make with all those gorjuss beads??????
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I’m not sure, maybe a cuff bracelet 🙂
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Love the idea. When I press “Make Sheet” another tab opens up with nothing on it. Any ideas? What am I doing wrong? Thanks.
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I had to experiment a bit but where you select bead type choose all over design so you will have a sheet full. There is a video on the site that explains it too 🙂
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How cool. Love all the colors and designs on the beads. Just might have to give this a try. Thanks for sharing. Love all your crafty helps each day.
Carole M.
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Thanks a bunch for the link
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Wow, that’s a lot of beads! Have fun!
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Wow Lindsay! Love the design link, already making beads in spite of my sinus headache today.
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Hello I just watched your video on you tube. I thought it was very informative until you got to the glazing part. You didn’t show that part.
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Sorry about that, I show how to heat the powder in real time in this video: http://youtu.be/Tiffj0E-cCs I hope it helps:)
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I own the Paperbeadcrafts web site and wrote the designer program on it. I would love to hear from you if you have any questions about it. As for the comment for the blank page in the next tab, you just need to make sure you click on a radio button under the image you want. The 2 strips that she got were one on each side for cutting beads from one end to the other in a long tapered triangle. This will result in a bead with color on each end and in the middle of the bead. The rest of it would be white or what ever color your paper is. It’s a neat effect actually.
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cool, thanks for clarifying!
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I love your fat, round beads, but I’m very leery of downloading things. Is there any way you could provide a template that I could just bring it up in a new window and print it from there? (Or maybe you could explain the shape and length of paper strip you use to make them?
Thank you,
Loralee
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