alisaburke: creating with jules: beaded bottle

I’ve always got my eye out when shopping, especially when thrift store shopping for pieces that I can upcycle. I’ve had these decorative bottles in my stash for a while, waiting for the right project to come along. I had the idea of gluing beads to them whilst browsing on Pinterest for mosaic bottles ideas, and I thought, why not beads?

You’ll need:

Bottle or vase

Spray paint (optional)

Glue gun & hot glue sticks

Fishing line

Beads of your choosing

First, I spray painted my bottle. I didn’t want white showing through after I glued the beads on, so I chose a mid tone blue which was pretty enough that if any of the base shows through it would look nice. :) Let dry. You can skip this step if your bottle is the color you already want it.

Start threading beads onto the fishing line. Tie a knot at one end and thread them on in your chosen colors. You could go for a mix of colors or do one colour at a time to end up with bands of color around the bottle like I did. I’ve mainly used mid sized glass seed beads, with some smaller ones used as well. (The gold ones.) The medium sized ones cover the bottle quicker for impatient people like me! Small beads take so long to thread!

Start gluing with your hot glue gun, adding a thin line of glue and wrapping the beaded fishing line around the bottle, pressing the beads in as you go. Keep working your way up and around the bottle. When you run out of fishing line, simply glue the end down and thread a new piece into the last bead and keep going. Make sure your new line catches in some of the hot glue to secure it.

Keep threading and gluing until you reach the top. Secure in the end with some glue and then go find some pretty flowers to display in it and admire your handiwork!