Beadlin'

Rating:

Supervision:

1 adult per 5 children

You will need:

Three 6-inch pipe cleaners (a.k.a. chenille stems) (you can cut down longer pipe cleaners if necessary)
Colorful beads (pony beads work best)
One large bead for the head (a dollhead bead with a face already painted on definitely works!)
Spool for the body OR another extra large bead
Optional: ribbon or cloth for clothes, other decor items

Intro:

Beadlins are small, flexible bead dolls that can be anything you want them to be! One of our most popular crafts, all you need to do is follow our instructions on how to make a basic doll, and then you can use whatever decor you like to create dolls with different themes, different colors, different occupations... Whatever you can think of!

Step 1:

Take two of your 6-inch pipe cleaners together and make sure they are even. Slip the bead you want to use as your head over both pieces. The parts of the pipe cleaners sticking out of the top of the head are going to be the hair, so adjust the position of the "head" bead on the pipe cleaner accordingly. Do you want short hair? Keep the head towards the top. Long hair? Move the bead down a bit.

Step 2:

From the bottom, slip one bead (such as a large, plastic "pony" bead) over both pipe cleaners. This will be your neck bead.

Step 3:

Take the third pipe cleaner and find the center, placing it just underneath the neck bead. Make sure the both sides are even!

Step 4:

Twist it the third pipe cleaner around the two pipe cleaners once. This pipe cleaner makes the Beadlin's arms.

Step 5:

Under the arms, slide your "body bead" or spool to make the trunk of the Beadlin'. I like to use a craft spool because it is a nice surface on which to later attach clothes, but a larger bead works just as well.

Step 6:

Begin beading the arms and legs as you wish. To end each of the limbs, just fold over the tip of the pipe cleaner and wrap it around the last bead.

Step 7:

You can further accessorize your Beadlin's hair by adding more beads to the pipe cleaners that sprout from the top of its head!

Step 8:

And just like that, you have a cute Beadlin'! After you have made your basic Beadlin', you can choose to bump it up by adding ribbon, beads, buttons, anything to make cool clothes.

Craft Variations:

Beadlin's are so flexible (no pun intended!) that you can make them into anything you want! You can use different beads, different colors of pipe cleaners, and different decor items to turn them into anything you can think of, from fairies to vampires to elves!