How- To : Beaded Dream Pendants

This is an idea I've been playing around with in my head for awhile now and just recently put it into action when I found the PERFECT bead to use as the base. I thought it was cool enough to share how I did it, I hope you find this inspiring!

Here's a finished piece:

To make this, here's what you'll need:

• A pre-drilled, large, flat bead for the base. I bought mine on sale at Porter's, this kind came in all different shapes & even colors. I think a lot of different materials would work well for this.
• Seed beads in varying colors
• Other small beads or gemstone chips (optional)
• Mod Podge
• A small, cheap brush.
• Needle nose pliers or tweezers for gripping the tiny beads.
• Paper towels & a cup of water, as needed for keeping brush clean.

Here's the base bead with some of the seed beads to show the size of what I was working with. You can go larger or smaller on both the pendant itself and with the little beads. There's a lot of room for creativity here, the end result is very organic and forgiving so you can feel free to play with it!


You can start by drawing out your basic shapes, I personally don't because I like to let the shapes and sizes of the beads guide my design.

This is so super simple, all you do is cover a small area with enough Mod Podge to get the beads to stick. Using your pliers, place the beads one at a time onto the surface where the Mod Podge is. Let it get tacky so you don't disturb the beads you've already placed, then repeat adjacent to the last section you finished.

As you can see, I started with a larger bead and built around that. You can see here where the Mod Podge overlapped and dried a bit, that's totally fine! Just as long as you don't put it on too thick, it's okay to have it extend out, it's going to get covered anyways. If it dries too thick it can make the surface too bumpy and take waaay too long to dry.

Finish until the entire surface is covered. The edges may be irregular, personally I love that look and it'll be okay as the beads aren't hanging off the surface. Coat with a few layers of Mod Podge, letting it dry in between. If you plan on exposing it to water you may want to clear coat it as well, as the Mod Podge won't hold up if submerged.