{DIY} Painted wooden necklace

As soon as I saw a tutorial for making a necklace out of painted wooden beads, I was in. It has everything I love: a geometric vibe, customized colors, chunky beads. This project is from here, but I tweaked the steps just a bit. Here's what I did...

Supplies: small wooden beads (got mine at Michaels), paint, painters tape, paintbrush, necklace chain

I used three colors (mint, coral, and gold) for my necklace, but you can really use more or less if you want. I just browsed the paint section at Michaels and kept coming back to good ol Martha Stewart. I would've preferred to have all three colors in the same finish, but no such luck at our Michaels. Finally I decided that the colors were more important to me than the finish. So, I bought: "wild salmon" in satin, "mint chip" in pearl, and "yellow gold" in metallic.

I used twelve wooden beads, four of each color. First I painted only two gold beads, but after stringing all of the finished beads on my necklace, I thought it needed a little more.

1. First begin by wrapping a 3" piece of painters tape around half of each bead (shown above). The tape is longer than the bead... this makes it easier to both hold onto the bead while painting and creates a stand for the beads while drying.

2. Hold onto the painters tape and paint the exposed wooden part of each bead.

3. Let beads dry completely on their painters tape stands. I painted 3-4 coats per bead.

4. Once beads are completely dry, peel the painters tape off slowly, pulling downward as you go.

5. String the beads onto your necklace chain with like-colors facing inward towards each other (just check out photo 6 for a visual). Check out Goodwill or a flea market for a cheap, thrifted necklace chain if you don't have one laying around. Cheap, cheap, cheap!

6. Enjoy with a cute spring outfit!