Upcycled Alphabet Paper Beads

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Upcycled Construction Paper Beads with Letters!

I love a hand made paper bead to customize jewelry or a project I am working on but sometimes I need specific letters for the perfect gift.

How to Add Letters to Rolled Paper Beads

I showed you how to roll beads in  How to roll upcycled paper beads. While I was rolling my beads, my daughter was looking for alphabet beads to make a necklace for her teacher. I did not have the letters she needed so we came up with a solution.

I had her use washable markers to color a picture for her teacher and write her teachers name out with spaces in between each letter. U   P   C   Y   C   L   E   D    C   H   A   O   S. I cut the picture into random strips and styles for rolling beads and cut each letter out individually. When I finished rolling a bead I picked a letter up with a small brush with glue on the tip and placed it on the bead. I brushed over the letter with the glue brush until it was coated and stuck to the bead. After the bead was completely coated I moved it to my drying rack and waited. Needless to say it turned out to be a great inexpensive project to do with my daughter and make a gift at the same time. She is so proud of the beads. She now colors me papers everyday to turn into beads.

Here I cut letters from magazines (you can't see those very well, sorry) and around letters I wrote on paper to make different designs. I layered my written letters on colorful patterns I liked to get blocky and bubbly letters for my beads. I also simply wrote letters onto some of the beads.

I happpened to find a whole word I liked so I cut it into a strip and put the strip on my roller with the word at the bottom outside of the strip. When I rolled it into a bead the word was on the face of the bead. 

The letters I had to cut were glued to beads. Bigger letters need bigger beads. I put glue on top of the bead where I wanted my letter to sit. Picked up the letter of choice with the same glue brush and placed it on  top of the glue. I brushed glue over the bead and letter. These letter beads are currently on string in my finishing basket and I will get a picture posted as soon I coat them. 

This work by Jennifer@theupcyclingnanny.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.theupcyclingnanny.com