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Unique Paper Bead Ideas

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Paper Bead Ideas

Unique paper bead ideas – are you looking for some new ones? Well maybe this idea will inspire you to make these beautiful paper beads with a vintage look.

unique paper bead ideas

In my latest YouTube video, I show you my newest unique paper bead ideas, which are fairly easy to make.

We all know about using tea-dyed paper in our journals and scrap books but I decided to use mine to make some pretty paper beads.

Unique Paper Bead Ideas Can Be Elusive

Since I started making paper beads back in the seventies, things have changed.

With platforms like YouTube making it easy to learn new crafts, paper beads have become much more common.

There are millions of people teaching the same basic paper bead rolling method that was started in the UK by the Victorians.

Victorian women would gather in their parlours to roll triangles of pretty paper on their knitting needles.

And this has pretty much been the basis of the craft for the last 130 years.

YouTube is full of videos showing very similar beads so I wanted to come up with a traditional shape bead but with my own look.

I really love making what I call Tapered Tube Beads.

You get the straight middle of a Tube Bead but they also have the tapered edges of a regular paper bead that was rolled from a pointed bead strip.

So I created a new plastic paper bead strip template to make it easier to create the bead strips.

unique paper bead ideas
Beads made using my new plastic template.

Having the straight middle, as opposed to the ‘fatter’middle that a pointed bead strip creates gives room to decorate the beads.

These beads were made with regular triangle bead strips that end in a point – they make fatter beads with a taper going all the way to the middle.
These beads were made with strips drawn out using my new Tapered Tube bead template – they have a nice straight middle you can decorate.
unique paper bead ideas
There is plenty of space to decorate the Tapered Tube beads with my tiny paper bead stickers before sealing with varnish or Mod Podge – these paper beads look and feel like wood.

Unique Paper Bead Ideas – Loving The Tea Dyed Antique look!

Once I’d made my new template, I decided to combine my love of making tea-dyed paper for my grungey journals with my love of paper bead making.

Paper Bead Ideas
My usual use of tea dyed paper

And this is what my new paper bead ideas session came up with.

I made these beads in mixed sizes using my template and I stuck the stickers on afterwards – then I glazed them.
The beads on the left of the shot are made by a slightly different method using my free printable. Keep reading!

Why are tea dyed paper beads unique?

They are unique because they have a really grungey, vintage look that you create entirely yourself. No two will ever look the same.

Most crafters will probably be familiar with tea or coffee dyeing paper. For those who aren’t, I go through the process in the video.

It’s a very inexpensive way to ceate unique papers – more economical than using paint. You can get a huge stack of one-off tea dyed-papers from one tea-dyeing session using 12 tea bags.

And you can achieve an infinite number of looks from very dark to very light. You can scrunch the paper first to get dark lines where the creases are or, you can leave it smooth.

Paper Bead Ideas
I totally LOVE tea dyed paper – I love the look and the texture.
It’s a very tactile craft resource to use.

I made my first batch of tea-dyed paper beads using the usual triangular strips, tapered to a point.

(See further up this post). But I wanted my beads to have that extra something that would make them look antique with a woody effect.

That was when I decided to make them into tube beads but still with a bit of a taper. Making them like that gave me scope to make some tiny stickers that would give the paper beads a unique look.

I created a sheet of 10mm and 8mm round designs which I made transparent. Then I printed them onto self-adhesive brown Kraft paper to blend with the tea- dyed look.

My paper bead stickers
How I decorated my tea dyed paper beads with the tiny stickers

These tiny stickers are available in my Etsy shop as a Print and Cut digital file for people with Silhouette cutters.

The file should work with Cricut machines too but as I no longer have one, I can’t advise.

But as they are PNG files, they should work on any machine that cuts PNGs.

Those people with electronic cutting machines will know all about ‘kiss cutting’ stickers.

For those who don’t know, that just means the blade only cuts through the sticker paper.

It won’t cut through to the backing sheet (as long as you know the right setings to use), which means you can simply peel the stickers off.

These long skinny stickers are for the beads made with quarter inch bead strips.
Just print from your Silhouette Design Studio with the register marks turned on, kiss cut, peel and put on your beads before sealing them

What if you like these paper bead ideas but you don’t want to get into tea-dyeing paper?

I have you covered! That is where my free printable comes in.

I scanned in one of my tea-dyed papers and created a printable sheet of paper bead strips with cut lines.

Also, I incorporated one of the sticker designs into the bead strip design so you won’t need the stickers.

This is what the paper bead strips cut from my free printable look like.
And these are the beads made with my free printable.

On my printer, the free printable of the scanned tea-dyed paper printed darker than the original tea-dyed paper.

But of course you can experiment with changing the color balance until you are happy with your print.

I quite like the difference in color between the free printable beads and the tea-dyed paper beads.

On the left of the picture are the paper beads made with the free printable. On the right the beads were rolled from tea-dyed paper.
Paper beads using my free printable.

Oh and one more important thing about my paper bead ideas…

The paper you use to print my free design on AND the paper you use to tea-dye is vitally important in getting quality beads.

On the left is the paper I use. It’s for color documents and it has a beautiful smooth surface.

It is 120gsm paper which produces a lovely robust paper bead.

You can scrunch this paper up to get the texture you want – it can rip but is easily repaired.

I really love this paper. It came from Tescos but you can also get it on Amazon – see my links.

Well I think that’s all I have to tell you about my tea-dyed paper beads.

I hope you have a go.

And now for the link to my free printable…

Click here to go straight to where it lives on Google Drive.

All you have to do is dowlnload the file in either A4 or US Letter Size and print it off on the recommended paper (see above).

If you can’t buy this paper locally, I do have it in my Amazon shops, along with the other resources I use in the video.

And here are the links to everything else:-

Links to my Amazon shops:-

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

My Amazon Affiliate link statement.

If you are using my free printables, here are the Terms & Conditions you will need to read before downloading them.

If you want to see all my other free printables, click here to go to the page where I have all the previous links.

You can find my my Etsy shop here.

I would love you to join me on Instagram – just click the link below to go over an subscribe.

In my video I promised to give you links to other videos on tea-dyeing paper – here they are…

DIY tea-dyed paper – several methods.

How to tea-stain paper – the easy way to DIY vintage/old looking paper for journaling.

So that just about wraps up this latest project…

I will be back with lots more ideas plus free printables but sadly, I never know when.

This is because I am full carer for my mum who lives with us and my time is very fragmented.

But I am always working away on my projects as and when I get time and I publish as soon as a project is finished.

I began this project weeks ago and only just managed to get it complete enough to post.

Thank you so much to everyone who visits here and my YouTube channel – I appreciate you very much.

It would be lovely to have you as a subscriber on here and also over on my YouTube channel where you can leave me a comment – which I will reply to.

Hope you enjoyed my latest paper bead ideas and see you again soon 🤗.