Pinterest DIY: painted wood necklace

Pinterest DIY is a new series of posts at Loose Tooth Studio!  I'll be following craft projects from around the web, documenting my results & variations here.   My first project was inspired by this wooden bead necklace by Urbane Jane.   Modeled after a Kate Spade original, she painted neon pink on wooden beads and strung them from a gold chain.  For more wearability, I altered the color scheme to robin's egg blue, gold and white.  The glitter paint creates visual unity with the chain & reminds my of the formica countertops in my old apartment: familiar, comforting and slightly outdated.

The project called for: A package of wooden beads, jewelry findings, spacer beads and paint.  Instead of the gold spacer beads pictured to the left, I used clear gold glass beads leftover from my middle school jewelry making days.

A Q-tip was pushed inside each bead to make it easier to handle when painting. First, two coats of white paint followed by one coat of the blue 'ocean breeze' paint.  Make sure to use a soft brush-stiffer bristles will leave lines in your coat of paint.  Next, a thin layer of gold glitter paint over just the blue portion.  Lastly, each wooden bead was coated with a gloss varnish to protect the paint and make it shiny. I made a few small changes from the original:  I painted each bead completely to disguise the wood and made it into a double stranded necklace.  The finished piece measures 28" in length, with 16 beads on the long strand and 8 on the shorter end.  Fancy!