How to Make a Wooden Bead Garland Ornament for Fall

I have been in love with these wood slice ornaments this year. We’ve used them in LOTS of projects. Today we’ll be making a wooden bead garland ornament and a fall ornament without beads — two options for your fall tree.

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Supplies for these Fall Ornaments

wood slice ornaments
jute
16mm wooden beads
scissors
acrylic craft paint — We used Moody Blue and Eucalyptus Leaf by DecoArts for this project.
flat craft paintbrush
white paint marker
soft black charcoal pencil
thin micron pen, black

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How to Make Wooden Bead Garland Ornaments

We actually started out by cutting these wood slices ourselves. But we use so many of them it’s just much easier to buy them already cut and drilled. Now I just buy them on Amazon (see links above).

Step One: Paint Background

To paint these wood slices, I just squirted a little paint in the middle and spread it around with my flat paintbrush. I gave these two coats, leaving a little blank space around the edge.

Step Two: Write Words & Add Details

Next, I wrote the fall words with a white paint marker. There’s a water-based Sharpie marker in the photo but I actually usually use my Uchida oil-based paint pens. They’re a little smelly but they work great.

I thought the ornament looked unfinished so I added a few more details — black “shadows” around the letters and a smudged charcoal line around the edges. (See video below to watch me do this.)

Step Three: Add Beads

Here’s where you decide what you want your ornament to be… a single ornament? a bead loop ornament/garland? or a long garland for your tiered tray or centerpiece.

Here’s one that I’m turning into a looped ornament. After stringing the jute through the hole, I made both ends go through one of the beads before separating them and adding 9 – 16mm beads to each individual string. Then I just tied the ends, but not too tightly, so they can still be flexible.

Wood Bead Garland & Ornament Video Tutorials

As with most of our projects, it may be easier to understand what I did if you actually see me do it. So here’s the video I did live on Facebook.

And here’s the video to show how we make the longer wooden bead garlands.

Finished Wood Slice Ornaments

And here they are finished! We used these to decorate our wood pumpkins and sold the rest in our Etsy shop and in our booth at Craft Gallery in Waco.

More DIY Fall Crafts

If you enjoyed this fall DIY craft project, you might also like these:

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‘Til the next project,

Ann @ Duct Tape and Denim