Paper Beads

Everyone is always amazed when they see a necklace of paper beads; they can never believe the beads are paper.  After a couple coats of glaze, they really look great.
In my designs, I usually mix the paper beads with other beads.  The "other" beads can be glass, porcelain, acrylic, stone or seed beads.  You can make the paper beads small, so they can fill in between other beads or the paper bead can be large enough to be your focal bead.

This is an example of beads made from a map.

So far I have found that paper beads can be made from just about any paper.  I have made the beads from special art papers, menus, maps, magazines, cereal boxes and other light weight cardboard.  As a matter of fact, I love the cereal box beads the best!

And the other surprising thing about paper beads is that it is always a surprise  how they turn out!


Here are some examples of beads made from different papers. 

These are beads I made from a Chinese restaurant menu

These beads were made from a cereal box

I have other examples on my etsy site:  Etsy.com/shop/annemadethis.  I would love to hear from anyone who is reading this.  In the next several days, I hope to show you how I make paper beads.  And I want to visit with some of my "artist friends" , preview their work so I can share it with you.

Also let me know if you know of a good place (reads cheap) place to buy large coat buttons. 

Thanks.

Anne