Easy DIY Farmhouse Beads

September 05, 2019

Easy DIY Farmhouse Beads

Hey, Everyone! I've been seeing a lot of home decor posts on the internet, and also staging pictures in my Chalk Couture team Facebook group, that have farmhouse beads in them. I'm like, "what the heck are farmhouse beads?". Well, turns out they are just pretty, wood bead necklaces or garlands for your home. They are super cute and add a nice layering touch around home decor items and mantles. They can be made in different colors too! I saw some cute painted ones and did a search on the internet to see what painting technique everyone was using. A lot of them were painting the wooden beads ONE BY ONE. Yikes! That's too tedious for me. The older I get, the less patience I have for projects that take FOREVER! So I figured what the heck; I can figure out an easier way. And I did!

I found a farmhouse bead kit on Amazon for around $10. It came with 3 difference size wood beads and some jute twine. I had some chalky style paints in my stash in a pretty light blue and an ivory color that were perfect for the project. I also had some empty nut containers on hand which turned out to be the perfect paint pot for the beads. I added about 1/4 cup of paint and 1/8 cup water to the container and gave it a good stir to make it a nice soupy consistency. I added the medium beads to the container and then stirred them around for a minute or so, making sure they were covered in the watered down paint, even in the holes. Then I repeated the process for the small beads.

I put a layer of parchment paper and some paper towel on some sheet pans and spooned the beads onto the paper towels, trying not to get too much extra paint on the paper towels. After all the beads were down, I gave each tray a little shimmy to move the beads around to get the excess paint off. I repeated the process for the smaller set of beads. I moved the beads around in their trays about every 15 minutes or so to make sure they weren't sticking together and after about an hour, I transferred them to a clean paper towel for them to dry.

I let them dry for a couple hours and they turned out perfect! I worked on my Halloween Chalk Couture projects for the rest of the afternoon. It got hot again today, almost 90°F and really muggy. Yuck. So hanging out in the cooler craft room was definitely the right call!

I finished my projects and figured I might as well make the farmhouse bead garland. It was super easy and after I was done, I couldn't wait to make more!

To make the tassel, I started out by wrapping the jute twine around the width of my hand, about 20 times, then cut jute in half. I measure a length of twine, about 40" and tied it around the middle of the cut jute bundle.

Then I added the beads in a nice pattern to the long length of jute. The jute tended to fray as I tried to thread the beads, so I put a piece of tape on the end make it sturdier.

I left enough of a tail to be able to tie onto the next jute bundle and got it tied on to the end of the garland, tight up against the last bead. I wrapped some jute around the bundle about 15 times to form the tassel, tied it off and added a bit of glue to the knot to keep the knot from coming undone, and repeated for the other tassel. I measured each tassel at 3" and cut off the excess.

Ta Da! Talk about super cute! I can't wait to make some more! As for painting them, I'm sure an acrylic craft paint mixed with water would have the same results, just be sure to shimmy them around on the paper towel to get off the excess paint.