Hello Crafters!

I am doing a lot of experimenting with air-dry clay lately and these beads are my latest creation!
The galaxy theme is everywhere these days and I love it! It’s such a beautiful look and you can pretty much galaxy-fy anything with a bit of paint and GLITTER 🙂

These beads are pretty awesome for whatever project you use them for. If you want to see what I did with them keep your eyes peeled over here because that will be next week’s post!

Supplies You Will Need:

• Blue Acrylic Paint
• White Acrylic Paint
• Pink Nail Polish
• Blue nail polish
• Glitter
• Toothbrush
• Small dish filled with water
• Fishing Line

To start I rolled small balls from my air-dry clay recipe that I shared last week. You can get the recipe here.
I used the stove-top method, rolled the dough into balls, and skewered them with a pin while they were still soft. Let them air dry.

Once you’ve handled those steps, head back over here and I’ll show you how to turn them into mini galaxies!

First lay down some wax paper or newspaper otherwise you’ll be getting paint all over the place.
Paint your beads with a dark blue, don’t worry too much about full-coverage, there will be plenty of paint on top of the blue and it looks good with some white parts! The blue paint just creates a base to start with.

Next use a paintbrush to flick white paint onto the beads. Simply dip in the paint and bend the bristles back like this:

The next step uses a really cool technique called :

Water Marbling

Water marbling can be done with a few different types of paint, but for this project I’m using nail polish.

First string your beads onto fishing line (any string or wire will do the trick if you don’t have fishing line). Stringing the beads allows you to do multiple beads at once, time-saver alert!

Next get a small dish of water and sprinkle some of your gold glitter on top of the water. Open up your nail polish and drip a couple of blobs onto the surface of the water. Use a pin to swirl the polishes together. You should have something that looks like this:

(I forgot to put glitter in this batch, oopsie!) You can also sprinkle some glitter on the beads when you take them out of the water.

Now that your water is prepared, take your string of beads and dip them into the water until they are fully submerged. Lift them up out of the water and the polish with cling to the beads like this:

Now you can flick some more white paint on top and sprinkle some gold glitter for the finishing touch.

Tips

• After you put the polish in the water you can’t wait too long to dip your beads. The polish will dry within a couple of minutes and it won’t cling as smoothly to the beads.
• Make sure the water is clean before you do the next batch because leftover dried polish with make it hard to swirl new polish that you drip in there. I simply stir the water around with a toothpick and all the dried polish clings to the toothpick leaving the water clean for the next batch.
• Seal the beads with a clear spray paint to protect your work.
• Don’t let the beads soak in the water, they aren’t exactly waterproof!

Have fun with your beautiful beads! Remember to check back next week to see what I did with my galaxy beads. If you want to share how you used your beads I would love to hear your ideas in the comments below! Also feel free to comment with any questions and I would be happy to help you out.

Happy Crafting!