If you have never tried natural dyeing or you are just short of time, this is an easy project with a beautiful and unique result. You can make some colorful wooden beads necklace, bracelet or adds on for your crafts. It’s cheap, quick and easy! All you need is some leftover red wine, we all have some in the kitchen, right? or hot drinks like tea and coffee.

Material:

Wooden Beads

String

Left over red wine

Glass jars, cereal bowl or similar

Tutorial:

Step 1: Pour the wine into your bowl, making sure it’s big enough for your beads to fit in. Add the beads

Step 2: Leave the beads to marinate and absorb the colour turning them around every 10 minutes. After 1 hour you will have deep red beads. TIP: You can leave the beads for less than 1 hour if you would like a lighter colour or perhaps try rose’?

Step 3: Drain the wine and leave the beads to dry.

TIP: You’ll notice that the beads will have a lighter colour ring in the middle, I personally like this detail, however, if you rather have a more solid colour, dye the beads one more time after they have dried.

Step 4:

In the picture below, you can see that I have dyed only half of the beads in red and the other half is a light brown. The light brown is from leftover coffee. To do this use a shallow pot and add enough coffee to cover just half of the beads. Put something on top of the beads while they are dyeing to make sure the beads don’t roll over (eg. a small plate). You could also experiment with normal tea, mint tea or Rooibos tea. You can get beautiful shades.

Step 5:

Once the beads are dry, repeat step 4 using red wine.

TIP: Since wine give a stronger colour I used just enough wine to cover 1/3 of the beads.

Step 5: Make your necklace and wear it!

What do you think? Are you tempted to give it a go? If you do, please let me know!

Remember, if you have any questions, just comment below or email me.

Looking forward to seeing your beautiful work.

Isabella xxx