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Make Jewelry Beads Out of Flower Petals

If you’ve been the lucky recipient of an online delivery of flowers and want to cherish your flowers forever, then you’ll need to come up with some way to preserve your blossoms long after they’ve wilted and faded. There’s numerous ways to make floral arrangements live on forever, but perhaps one of the most innovative ways is to make jewelry out of them. In this tutorial, you’ll learn just how you can take the floral arrangements that somebody ordered from an online florist and sent to you for your birthday, Valentine’s day or any other day and turn them into beads that you can use to make jewelry.

Making the Clay

The first step to making beads from any flower petals is to make the dough/clay mixture that you’ll use to form the beads. Do this by first plucking the petals of 8 to 12 flowers. Use any type of flower petals that you like, and they don’t necessarily have to be fresh petals. They can be wilted ones. Cut the petals into thin strips, and place them in an non-stick frying pan. Add approximately 1/2 to 1 cup of distilled water to the petals (just enough to cover the petals), and bring the mixture to a boil. This helps release the fragrance, and using distilled water allows for a purer fragrance. When they petals become soft and translucent, then turn off the heat and allow them to cool.

Forming the Clay

Place the cooked petals into a blender. Alternatively, you can place them into a mixing bowl and use a hand blender, whichever you prefer. Blend the petals until they’re smooth, adding a bit of water as needed to make the blended product the consistency of a thick smoothie. The end product should have a glossy sheen with all the petals blended evenly. In short, it should look a bit like pudding. Place the blended mixture back in the skillet, and bring it just under a boil, stirring it constantly. Simmer the mixture until almost all of the water has evaporated and it’s consistency has become more like clay. Please note that if the consistency is more like “wet” applesauce, then it will be more difficult to form the beads later on. Place the toughened, clay-like mixture on parchment paper (or wax paper), and allow it to dry out completely overnight.

Rolling the Beads

Remove the somewhat clay from the parchment paper, pinch off pieces of it and proceed to roll it into beads. Alternatively form the beads into squares, ovals or any other shape you like. The beads will shrink a bit as they dry, so it’s best to make the beads larger than you want the end product to be. Place the beads on a nail, beading pin or other such sharp object to pierce them and make a hole in them that you can use for stringing and assembling the jewelry later on. Move the bead up and down on the nail to keep it from getting stuck to it, and then allow them to dry for another 24 hours. Then, remove them from the nails and lay them in a sunny location to allow them to dry out completely over the next week or two. After that, you can place them on elastic thread, metal or anything else you choose to create bracelets, necklaces and other types of jewelry.

By making beads out of the flowers someone sent you from an online florist, you can preserve them forever and enjoy them for years to come.