Beadmaking 101

Lesson 2: Natural Materials

Wooden Beads

Chances are you've seen plenty of wooden beads in the store, but never dreamed that you could make your own. If this is the case, you may be excited to learn that wooden beads can be created without a lot of fancy wood working tools and supplies. In fact, if you have access to a pin or a nail, you have all the supplies that you need to create your very own wooden beads.

To try your hand at this type of bead making, simply remove a small branch from your tree of choice, and cut the branch into small segments using a pair of pruning shears or a sharp knife. (The size of the segments will depend on what size beads you want to make.)

Once you have all of your segments cut, hollow out the center of each bead with a pin. As the hole becomes bigger, you can use a nail to make faster work of it.

Then, string the beads on a piece of wire, and allow them to air dry.

And that's really all there is to it!

--The above instructions were adapted from Susi Muss's "Twig Beads for Embellishing Your Baskets," available at the BasketMakers website. To view the original instructions, please refer to the link at the bottom of this lesson.--

Additional Tips and Resources

In the example shown here, I selected a branch off of a dogwood tree. Because the branch was already somewhat hollow, it did not take long to carve out a hole for the necklace wire to run through. You may want to experiment with branches from several types of trees until you find one that is easy to work with.

As I was preparing the beads for this necklace, I decided to peel off the outer bark from all of the bead segments. I then elected to leave the inner bark on half of the beads, and peeled it off of the remaining beads. As you can see from the photo, this created a nice contrast.

I did however, find that the wood dried out fairly quickly, so if you are going to remove any of the bark, it is a good idea that you do this as soon as possible

If you have carving tools or a sharp utility knife, you might try your hand at carving details into the beads while they are still wet.

Or for an entirely different effect, you might remove all bark from the beads in favor of giving them a bright coat of paint once they are dry. Regardless of how you decide to decorate them, your wooden beads are sure to look great!

For more tips and project examples, be sure to visit the following websites: Make Twig Beads and How to Make Wooden Beads

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