Wooden bead ballerina

Wooden bead ballerina

This is the beginning of my adventure with wooden beads. My debut is the wooden bead ballerina, which is a combination of painted wooden balls and tulle pompom.

I invite you to the tutorial with step-by-step instructions and with suggestions on how to avoid the pitfalls lurking for beginners. Unfortunately, I made some mistakes, but you can learn from mine instead of making yours.

Supplies

  • Wooden beads with a diameter of 2.5 cm and 1.5 cm
  • Tulle – a 15cm wide section and a length of about 1m per pompom
  • Twine
  • Key ring
  • Acrylic paints
  • Black rollerball pen
  • Clear acrylic coating
  • Sticks
  • Brush
  • Glue (optional)
  • Cardboard template for pompoms
Wooden bead ballerina - materials
Wooden bead ballerina – materials

Ballerina head instruction

The first step is to paint the wooden beads, and more accurately paint the hair. It is best to put balls on a stick so that they do not move. If the stick is too thin, you can seal it with a piece of paper so that the balls are still.

Choose the hair color that best suits the color of the skirt that the ballerina will wear. In the case of my dolls, they are black hair for the red skirt and brown for beige.

Leave the beads to dry.

Attention! Do not make my mistake and do not draw eyes at the raw wood because the ink dissolves. With this step, wait until the balls are coated with clear acrylic spray.

When the paint dries, you should cover ballerina head with a clear acrylic coating. Spray the balls from a distance according to the instructions on the packaging and let them dry.

Wooden bead ballerina - heads in progress
Wooden bead ballerina – heads in progress

Now it’s time to paint ballerina’s eyes. In addition, apply a little brocade to the hair and spray again with clear acrylic coating. I made the brocade after the second layer of varnish, so I had to apply a third layer. Allow to dry.

Attention! The advantage of drawing eyes on the coated bean is that that any imperfections can be easily repaired using nail polish remover.

Wooden bead ballerina - heads in progress
Wooden bead ballerina – heads ready

Making a tulle skirt

Ballerina’s skirt is simply a tulle pompom. The step-by-step instruction is available here. I used exactly the same red pompom that I created in the instruction post. As you can see in the pictures, the red skirt is sometimes too thin, so for a beige skirt I used longer piece of tulle (about 90 cm long). Thanks to that beige pompom is more dense.

Wooden bead ballerina – combining elements

Prepare head, tulle skirt, key ring and twine.

Wooden bead ballerina in progress
Wooden bead ballerina – combining elements

String wooden beans, tie a knot larger than a hole in the ball and tie the tulle pompom. Finally, hide the remaining part of the string in the hole and strengthen the joint by gluing the hole.

After the glue dries, the wooden bead ballerina is ready. Congratulations!

Inspiration found on Pinterest.