How to Make Your Own Beaded Curtain With Coffee Stirrers
If your teenager wants to adorn her bedroom door with a colorful beaded curtain, save money by letting her create the decoration herself. Making the hanging strands of beads is not only easy, but also economical when you use hollow, plastic coffee stir sticks as spacers between the beads. Choose shaped accents, colorful beads and coffee stirrers to coordinate with your teen's bedroom decor. Suspending the strands from a thin wood dowel will allow you to easily change the curtain to match current tastes and trends.
Things You'll Need
- Measuring tape
- Scissors
- Clear fishing line
- Plastic, glass or shaped beads
- Buttons, foam shapes or paper flowers
- Black or white coffee stirrers
- 1/4-inch wide wood dowel, cut to fit opening
- Adhesive dots
- Cup hooks
Instructions
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Measure the height and width of the doorway with a measuring tape. Decide how far down you want the beaded curtain to hang to determine how long each strand should be.
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Use scissors to cut enough pieces of clear fishing line so strands spaced 1 inch apart will cross the entire width of the doorway. Cut each piece 5 inches longer than the desired length of the bead strand. If you want the curtain to be 60 inches long, for example, cut each piece of fishing line 65 inches long.
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3
Choose the beads to include on the curtain's strands, such as colorful plastic beads, round glass versions or carved beads shaped like leaves, flowers or hearts. In addition to the beads, consider adding accents like buttons, foam shapes or paper flowers.
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4
Buy hollow, white or black coffee stirrers that resemble thin straws. Use the 6-inch long stir sticks "as is" if you want to use fewer beads or use scissors to trim the stirrers to 1-, 2- or 3-inch lengths if you want to see more beads along each strand.
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Start a strand for the beaded curtain by threading one bead onto the end of the fishing line and tying a knot to contain the bead "inside" the knot. Create a pattern to complete the strand, such as adding one coffee stir stick, one paper flower and one bead in that same order until you are 3 inches from the end of the strand. Double knot the end of the strand. Make the rest of the strands following the same pattern.
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Cut a 1/4-inch wide wood dowel rod to fit inside the door frame. Use double knots to tie each beaded strand of fishing line to the dowel. Place adhesive dots on both sides of each knot to keep the strands from slipping back and forth on the wood dowel.
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Screw in one cup hook on each end of the door frame. Ensure the hooks are on the opposite side of the door so you can still shut the door with the beaded curtain in place. Rest the wood dowel in the cup hooks to hang the custom-made beaded curtain.
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Tips & Warnings
Give the coffee stirrer beaded curtains more pizazz by embellishing the plain white or black stir sticks. Coat the sticks with acrylic paint or glitter glue or create designs with solvent ink pens that will not smear on the plastic. Allow the sticks to dry before stringing them.
