Categories: Crafts & Hobbies

How to Make Round Paper Beads

Making paper beads from recycled or hand painted paper is a popular craft, but after a while it can get old making the same tapered shape of beads. Many people would like to make round paper beads, but they can’t quite figure out how. The process is a bit longer and more complicated than making tapered beads, but it can yield beautiful results.

The basic concept for making round paper beads is the same as for tapered–you cut paper into long skinny triangles, roll the strip into a bead around a toothpick, coat it with a sealer, remove it from the toothpick and let it dry. The difference in making round beads rather than tapered tubes is in the length of the strips. For a bead to be round, the strip needs to be long enough to roll to a thickness that’s equal to the width. This means you need to start with a narrower triangle and make a longer strip than normal paper.

Some methods call for gluing multiple sheets of paper together before cutting them to get the longer strips needed for round paper beads. That works, but it can leave a bump in your bead from the thickened spot where the papers are overlapped and glued together. It also means you need a cutting surface long enough to cut the double length of paper. This method eliminates the bump and allows you to cut on a paper-length cutting surface.

In this tutorial, you’ll be making 1/2 inch round beads. For 1/2 inch rounds you need strips 24 inches long. Start with a 12×12 inch square of paper, such as scrapbook paper.

Turn your paper wrong side up to measure and mark it before cutting. Along the bottom edge, make marks in 1/2 inch increments. Along the top edge, measure in 1/8 inch in from the edge and make a mark there, then continue to mark from that spot in 1/4 inch increments.

Cut from the bottom corner to the inch mark and discard that piece. Your second cut is from the first 1/4 inch mark on the top to the first 1/2 inch mark on the bottom. You should have a strip that tapers from 1/2 inch at one end to 1/4 inch at the other end. Make your next cut from the same 1/2 inch mark (the new bottom corner) to the next 1/4 inch mark. This strip should taper from 1/4 inch at one end to a point at the other. The two strips together will make one round paper bead. Continue cutting your paper in this way until you’ve cut all your strips.

To roll a bead, start with a 1/2 inch end and roll it like a traditional paper bead. Add some glue to the last inch (the 1/4 inch end) and stick it down to itself. Next, brush the first inch of a 1/4 inch strip with glue and butt it against the 1/4 inch end you just glued down. Continue rolling the second strip to the point and glue that down. Coat the bead with sealant as you usually would and leave it to dry according to your normal method. Continue to make beads in this way until you have as many as you want.

This method for making round paper beads allows you to double the length of your paper strip without creating a bump, dealing with glued-together papers coming apart as you roll them or the difficulty of cutting a 24 inch paper strip. If you want to make round paper beads in larger sizes, increase the length of the paper strip. For instance, you can make a 3/4 inch round paper bead by cutting three paper strips–3/4 inch to 1/2 inch, 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch and 1/4 inch to a point–and rolling them together.