Dip & Drip: Wood Bead Finishing Part 1

Dipped painted wooden beads.

This is one of the messiest methods of bead painting. Hands down. It's not the prettiest of finishes either.

In theory, you can dip your beads in paint and it will evenly coat the surface. Nope. As you can see by the above picture, the coating can be gloppy and uneven. Boo!

To paint via Dip & Drip, you will need:

• Beads (of course!)
• Plastic sheet or waxed paper to rest your wet beads.
• Plastic zipper sandwich bags.
• Acrylic craft paint.
• Disposable chopsticks for drawing out the wet beads (recommended one pair/color mix).

Here's what I did:

Squirted a bit of acrylic paint into the sandwich baggie. Tossed in the beads and...

smooshed the paint around. I kept checking on the beads to be sure the paint was coating the whole bead. When the beads are completely coated, fish them out using a chopstick and set them onto your drying surface (ie. waxed paper).

The results were not 100% bleak: if you plan to try this out yourself (because the results are boarder-line cool), I recommend using just plain simple craft paints. They're a little more watered down because the thicker artists' acrylics are a bit too clingy and thick. Though the acrylics can be diluted with water, this will leave the beads with more of a stained effect... an uneven stained effect, but a stain look nonetheless. So basic craft paints - gloss or matte (if you opt for matte, remember to seal the beads after to prevent bleed especially if your beads will be used outside).

Pros to this method:

• You can finish a bunch of beads at once.
• It's just plain fun! :-)
• It's inexpensive.
• It's fast.

Cons to Dip and Drip:

• MESS-mess-MESS.
• Uneven finished effect.
• Paint can get trapped in the hole.

I will be re-visiting the Dip & Drip method another time. Coming soon: Spray Painted beads! Suggestions welcome, so feel free to leave them in the comments.

~Samantha