How to Make Paper Bead Jewelry: Simple, Easy and 100% Common Household Supplies

Ever since I checked out The Paper Bead book from my local library I've been absolutely in love with paper beads. An infinite number of variations are possible. Before you start make sure you have household glue, cotton ball sticks or some other thin rod you can use to shape bead hole, and magazines and/or interesting paper. Nail polish can be added to beads after they are done drying to give beads a shiny veneer. You can also paint beads with a pattern of your choice if you want. Here are some of the simplest beads:

Spiral Design.
Cut a 5" by 1" piece of magazine or brightly colored paper. You can also use white computer paper and draw a design of your choice on it with marker.
Make a diagonal cut along one side, so that upper portion of strip is a right triangle. The longer you make the right triangle the more angled the final bead will be. If you leave the strip as a rectangle you will end up with a cylinder bead. The piece of paper should now look like a really long right trapezoid.
Cover one side of the paper with glue.
Wrap the piece of paper (with the narrow side parallel to the cotton ball stick) around the stick.
Allow the bead to dry for a minute or so and then gently remove from stick
and viola, you have yourself a paper bead
Using magazine paper gives a really cool shiny random effect.
Click on link below for clarification/ pictures.

This link shows how the paper should be cut and wrapped around stick
http://www.marthastewartcrafts.com/img/product/cat06/00019808-105269.jpg

This link shows how the finished bead should look like
http://enchanted-art.blogspot.com/2007/08/fabric-and-paper-beads.html

Disk Bead
Do the same thing as with the spiral bead using a 12" by one eighth inch strip of paper. Or you can use many long one eigth inches of paper taped together to give a spiral appearance. This will result in a thin but very thick bead that can give variety to a necklace made mostly of spiral beads.

Ball Bead
Same thing as the spiral bead only use an isoceles triangle 10 inches high and 1inch wide. As you wrap the paper around the cotton stick, try to keep tip of triangle in the middle of the bead. This will result in a round bead.

Don't be afraid to get creative and try out new variations on these themes.Bead made out of connected spiral , disk and ball beads could be painted to make a woman wearing a skirt!