Hello again, and sorry it has been so long! My husband and I have recently moved to Boise, ID and have been shrouded in chaos for the past couple of months. Things have calmed down and I have time and space to begin creating jewelry once again. I had done several projects over the past year but have not had much in my blog due to having items listed on Etsy to organize and maintain. I will have my Etsy shop up and running again soon, but in the mean time I would like take a moment to share in my excitement for my current project: Paper beads!

The beads I am working on are made with a variety of papers and methods. I have made beads of rolled paper but really wanted to find a way to make rounded beads. I had tried to find paper mache bead making methods in order to fulfill this wish over a year ago, but found myself on a cyber-based snipe hunt with very little information at my finger tips. There were a few articles detailing paper clay, but the methods seemed fairly involved. Just recently, I found myself trying again, and with much more success! The crafting blog industry must have picked up in the past year with regard to this subject. Also, I am sure that typing "Paper pulp beads" rather than "Paper Mache Beads" made a difference as well. Whatever the cause, I now have close to three dozen round beads made from recycled newspaper pulp dried and ready to sand, drill, paint and varnish. I have some more research ahead of me regarding the type of varnish to use, but most of the blogs seem to agree that furniture varnish works well.

My methods were the result of reading several blogs and taking out the core information common to most of them.

Step one: rip up paper into small chunks
Step two: soak the paper in hot or even boiling water for several minutes to an hour.
Step three: Use a blender to make the paper pulp smoother (note: I did not do this at first, until I realized my impatience to get started had caused me to no soak the paper for long enough. So for those of you like me, who just can't wait, I highly advise hitting the thrift stores and getting an old blender. Mine is actually a smoothie machine. If you do not blend the paper, most of the blogs agree you need to soak it in very hot water for AT LEAST an hour)
Step four: DRAIN/WRING OUT AS MUCH WATER AS POSSIBLE. It took me quite a long time to get this step right. This step can be difficult if you are not using the right type of strainer (I, sadly, did not so it took some time). Get a fine mesh wire strainer, and perhaps some fine mesh cloth like cheesecloth or several layers of tulle fabric. The fabric will allow you to press with your hands once you get a good amount of water out without losing too much of your paper pulp.
Step five: place the paper pulp in a bowl and add an adhesive (you can make a wheat paste or use any clear drying glue such as Elmer's. Most blogs seem to recommend wallpaper paste. I used Elmer's. I also thew some dry flour on because I was having issues with the pulp being too damp still. I don't recommend that, it may have made things more difficult. I have ADD if you can't tell. I may try Modpodge next time just for kicks).
Step six: BAKE THE BEADS. I only found this step in ONE blog that I looked at, but it seemed like a no-brainer to me. Perhaps it has something to do with wallpaper paste being used in most of the other blogs. But the one that recommended Elmer's or wheat paste suggested baking. I baked them at 225 (my oven seems to run a little hot. 250 should work just fine too) for around an hour total. I baked them in two separate shifts tho because I had to go to work and couldn't leave paper beads in the oven. If, unlike me, you have endless patience and a place to put them, just let them air dry for several days; check them and re-roll them if necessary.

This is as far as I have gone. As you can see, I did not follow any one set of directions very well or very clearly, and I still came out with mostly roundish paper beads that appear to be very durable. Drilling will be the ultimate test of this.

The main point of this post is to demonstrate that even I, with my spastic ADD and impatient nature (and inability to follow directions) can make reasonably presentable paper beads. So if you are trying this at home, and you accidentally forget something or mess something up and have to go back, it's really ok. Chances are, you will still come out with beads in the end.

Stay tuned for how the beads turned out finished!