DIY Beaded Star Garland

One of the upsides of going back to graduate school in the fall is that I get to move out of the garbage-hole of an apartment I have been living in for the past two years.

The downside? I'm going from a three bedroom apartment that actually had too much space for me to even use... to a 289 square foot studio apartment. We do what we gotta do in the name of education/living within our means, right? Right? Shhh, let me believe that I'm not an idiot, okay.

I'm actually pretty okay with this major downsizing though because it gives me a chance to reassess my possessions and completely redecorate a small, cohesive space. Because of that, I'm currently working on creating just some small decorative pieces to take with me when I move so that my new apartment feels a little more personal. One of the things that I think is going to work well in my space is this cute little beaded star garland:

It didn't take that long to make, and I think it's going to work well in the more neutral color palette that I think that I'm going to go with.

Curious about how I made it? Here is what I did:

First, I gathered all of my materials: some string (I used hemp), small beads that the string can fit through, felt, a scrap of poster board, a pencil, sharpie/chalk for marking the felt, hot glue, and some scissors.

With the scrap of poster board, I started by creating the pattern for my star. I just free-handed my shape, but you could easily just print a star shape from Google and trace that if you want to be super accurate. I like to be wild and crazy and live life on the edge though.

Next, I folded a section of the felt over and traced out as many star shapes in a row that would fit. Leaving the pins in to help with the cutting, I cut a double thickness of the felt for each star.

I continued in this fashion until I had as many stars as I thought I would need. I ended up with three black stars and eight brown ones so that I could create an alternating pattern. That was it for the stars for now-- next, I tackled the garland part itself.

To create the garland string, I cut a really long length of string/hemp which was longer than I wanted the end product to end up. And by really long length, I mean like..... 10 feet. Homegirl ain't playin' around.

For each bead that I wanted to add, I started by tying a knot in the string.

After tying the knot, I would slide on a bead and tie another knot. Then I would move over an inch, tie another knot, slide on another bead, tie a knot, and continue on until I'd have five beads in a row (with alternating colors of course because why not).

After every five beads, I would leave a large gap for a star to go in until I had room enough for each of the stars that I had cut out. And that was it for the garland string. The only thing left to do was to go about adding the stars.

To add the stars, I would lay down a star, add a little hot glue to the center, stick the string down, and then sandwich another star on top.

I wanted to give the stars a little more polish, so I just whip stitched around all of the edges. Now that I'm typing this out it almost seems like this took a lot of work... but in reality this surprisingly didn't take very long. An afternoon's worth of work maybe?

However long it took, I'm pretty sold on this little creation. I can just imagine it hanging above the window in my future cardboard box of an apartment, which is kind of endearing.

For now though, I just have it hanging on this palette (that I made!) in my parent's house until I can take it to my new tiny-home. You know all those tiny home shows on HGTV? I've always wondered what it would be like to live in one, so I guess that's how I can think of my new studio apartment... Ayyyy, that's a cool thought.



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