How to Make Inexpensive Jewelry

Make your own beads with paper or clay.

Many have found success crafting handmade jewelry to sell online or at fairs. Bead-making takes a bit of practice to perfect, but after learning the basic techniques you can make your own earrings, bracelets and necklaces at little cost. Using colored paper from magazines or polymer clay, you can custom-make your own kid-friendly, casual or elegant jewelry to sell, wear yourself or give as gifts.

Things You'll Need

• Magazines
• Scissors
• Needle
• Craft glue
• Polymer clay
• Fishing line
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Small brush
• Clear varnish
• Parchment paper
• Baking sheet
• Blank earring studs

Instructions

Paper Beads

1. Look through some old magazines for colorful, image-heavy pages.

2. Cut long, skinny triangles out of the magazines, 2 inches or longer. Make the base of the triangles no wider than the length of your needle. The other two sides of your triangles should be equal in length. You can make the triangles as long as you like; longer triangles will make fatter beads.

3. Take one triangle and lay it flat with the attractive side facing down. Place a needle over the base of the triangle.

4. Tightly roll the paper around the needle until you get to the triangle's point.

5. Apply a small dab of craft glue to the underside of the triangle's point, and press down to hold it in place and prevent unraveling. Slide the needle out.

6. Roll more triangles the same way until you have enough beads to make a bracelet or necklace.

7. Paint varnish on each bead with a small brush for a shiny finish. When the varnish dries, string the beads on a piece of fishing line and secure with a knot.

Clay Beads

1. Break off a piece of colored polymer clay and roll it in your hands to warm it up and make it pliable. If using multiple colors of clay, wash your hands before touching other colors.

2. Mold your beads into your preferred shapes. You can press small colored dots of clay onto a bead-sized clay sphere and roll the ball to make polka-dot beads. Another simple idea is shaping colored clay into balls, and shaping black or white clay into disks or diamonds, then stringing alternate shapes. Check the resources at the end of this article to see how to make elaborate millefiori and other cane beads.

3. Poke holes in any beads where you want to thread fishing line through them. To poke a neat hole, push a needle or toothpick through the clay until a bump appears on the other side. Then, poke the needle through the bump until it comes through the other side. If gluing clay onto earring studs, you won't need to poke holes in the clay.

4. Preheat an oven to 265 degrees.

5. Line clay beads in a single layer on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

6. Bake the clay for 20 minutes and allow the beads to cool. If they are still rubbery, put them back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

7. Paint varnish on each bead with a small brush for a shiny finish. When the varnish dries, string the beads on a piece of fishing line and secure with a knot, or glue the beads to an earring stud with a hot glue gun.

References

• Bead for Life: How to Roll a Bead
• The Incredible Clay Book; Sherri Haab & Laura Torres; 1994

Resources

• Make Millefiori Beads
• Make Lace Beads