A few months ago I was doing a little online shopping and came across this quadrature necklace from Anthropologie. I instantly fell in love with its simplicity and wood beads, but the price tag of $68? I didn’t love that as much. Then light bulb! I decide I’d get crafty and make myself one for a fraction of the price.
image via Anthropologie
Mine didn’t turn out exactly like the Anthropologie one, but I’m happy with that because it served as my muse not as a guide to copy. There’s a lot of left over material so you can easily make at least 10 necklaces varying in color and shapes. Hello birthday gift! Mothers day gift! Valentines day gift! Seriously the necklace is so simple to put together, make a few at a time [switch up colors and style to make each one unique] and you’ll always have a cute gift on hand.
Wood Bead Necklace Materials
All materials can be found at Michaels Craft Store – don’t forget your coupon for extra savings [they typically have a 40% one item or 20% off entire purchase]. The paint I used was purchased at Target, their new craft aisle is awesome and the paints come in a range of colors and sheens.
Click on each item below to buy directly online
- Wood craft beads [I highly recommend using your coupon on this item]
- Spring coil – this pack comes with 4 different metals
- 12mm Lobster clasps
- Leather cording
- Acrylic paint
- Small Paintbrush
- Pliers
- Scissors
Step-by-Step
Using a variety of blue ombre colors I painted the wooden balls. The squares were painted silver to give the necklace some shine. Amanda from Be Crafty Workshop made wood bead key chains and she spray painted some of her beads gold metallic and some are sprinkled with glitter – genius!
It took three coats of paint to reach the shade I wanted on the silver and light blue colored beads and two coats on the dark blue bead. The paint dries fairly fast, but make sure the beads are fully dried between applying paint coats. For an easy painting hack visit Lisa at Handcrafted Parties.
While the beads were drying, I cut 24″ of leather cording. TIP – the leather cording was kinked when I first measured and cut it so I tied my length of cord to a dresser knob and hung clothes pins from the bottom to straighten it out a bit; I let it hang there for an hour. You can always stretch and work the kinks out too.
After attaching a spring coil to one end of the cord, I strung my beads in an ombre pattern placing a silver bead in between each wooden ball.
Once the beads were strung, I cut the cord to my desired necklace length [I originally started with 24″ of cording because I wanted to give my self the option of either creating a long or short necklace]. I completed the necklace by securing the second spring coil to the cut end of the cording and attached a lobster clasp to it.
Voila! Now the wood bead necklace is ready to wear!
This necklace was so fun to make, I’m already planning on making more. I Hope that it brings some sparkle and shine to your winter.
Happy crafting friends!
xoxo
-K
How are you wearing your new wood bead necklace?
Tag me [@eightpepperberries] in your photos on Instagram, I’d love to see!
Love this DIY?!
Sign up for the Eight Pepperberries newsletter & receive DIY’s straight to your inbox!
Leave a Reply