Summertime Crafts: DIY Oven Baked Clay Beads

By Angela Sellari

Are you feeling the pressure to come up with activities to keep the kids busy this summer? These DIY oven baked clay beads are a terrific summertime boredom buster, and is the perfect activity for a hot day when you want to stay indoors. The days have been scorching hot here in Florida, so my daughter and I have been doing a lot of crafts since school let out.

We made these homemade beads one afternoon when my nieces were over.

How to Make Oven Baked Clay Beads

Make a simple dough from basic kitchen ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 – 1 cup hot water

In a medium-size bowl, combine the flour and salt. Next, add the oil and hot water, and work it with your hands until it is pliable… and continu to kneed for 10-15 minutes until it is smooth and not sticky. This is when you’ll want to put the kids to work.

We planned to paint some of our beads, so we left a large chunk of our dough in it’s natural color. But some of it we colored with food coloring. To do this, simply add a few drops of food coloring to your dough, knead and work it in until you’ve achieved the color you want.

Back to making the beads… Once your dough is prepared, use your hands to roll the dough into desired shapes. For the tube shaped beads, take a small piece of dough and using a rolling pin, roll it out onto a piece of parchment paper. Next, carefully roll the flattened piece of dough around a wooden skewer.

For the round beads, simply roll a piece of dough into a ball and poke a wooden skewer through the center. The kids actually got pretty good at this.

Once all of your unpainted beads are shaped, place them on a parchment or silicone lined baking sheet into the oven on 200 degrees for about 1 1/2 hour. They will be hard to the touch when done.

Lastly paint your beads. Allow them to dry completely. Then string them up using stretchy cord, to make bracelets and necklaces. All you have to do is tie the ends in a knot.

Beautiful hand painted beads…

These oven baked clay beads are so much fun to make!

This bracelet below is one we made using natural beads and dough that we colored with red and blue food coloring. I think it turned our very pretty!

So, what’s in your summer fun arsenal?

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