Easy Wood Bead Trivets

I recently spent some time with my parents in Houston and we had a blast. I put on a few pounds because I cooked more nights than I didn’t. And when I cook I kind of go all out. And not in a terribly healthy way.

I hand battered and fried shrimp twice (I batter them with a spicy batter and then coat them with a sugar and cornmeal mixture and they are out of this world, people), I made spaghetti and spaghetti squash twice. Once with lemon sauce and I have to say it’s one of my favorite pasta sauces in the whole, wide, world. And one night I kept it simple with grilled chili dogs and waffle fries. And then we had a medical situation in the house that put me off of chili for, like, ever. Seriously. Don’t know if I can ever eat it again. And if you’re wondering, I didn’t give anybody food poisoning or anything. Totally unrelated. I swear And then one night I was given grief for cooking too much and how it isn’t worth the effort I got pissy and declared that I’d be eating fruit salad and peanut butter cookies since my dinner cooking efforts were getting me an earful of complaint. And I’ll be darned if I didn’t straight up eat 3-ingredient peanut butter cookies and fruit salad for dinner that night, even if I did have to make them which kind of went against the complaint of me putting out too much effort cooking, but whatever. :)

I have a tendency to cook like the old Paula Deen. Add butter now, ask questions later. But the health of my recent menu aside, I enjoy cooking. Though it was technically meant to be a vacation we couldn’t all get on the same page for what to do and a trip to the botanical garden turned into watching judge shows in my mom’s den instead. Visiting a neat little area with touristy shops called Old Town Spring turned into watching something called Paternity Court in my mom’s den, which I was advised was nothing like Jerry Springer, and I’ve got to tell you I strongly disagree. And going to the movies turned into watching Dog the Bounty Hunter in my mom’s den instead. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Bored as I was, cooking was a way for me to keep my hands busy without sitting in front of the TV while actually accomplishing something of worth. You, know, deep fried, tasty, tasty worth.

Before I had even hopped on a plane to head north I had whipped up this awesome wood bead trivet that I’m totally digging on. It’s cute, it was easy to make and it has a functional and totally practical purpose that means it will literally be used almost daily making it a totally ideal project, in my eyes.

Want to learn how to make a wood bead trivet?

For this project you will need:

• 1-inch wood beads
• leather cord
• fabric dye

I looked around for ages in stores for 1-inch wood beads that were nice and round and never quite found them. Either I needed a ton of bags of them (and could only use a coupon on 1 and I’m too cheap to buy several at full price) plus the ends of them were quite flat. And I really wanted really round beads. If you don’t mind you can look in craft stores, or you can purchase your 1” wood beads online like I did.

I played around with dyeing my beads with a variety of things but my favorite was some really strong fabric dye I got from Dharma Trading Co. I got nice, saturated colors really quickly.

Another option I liked was a wood stain called Unicorn Spit, but I placed 2 orders and got the wrong colors twice and running out of time and patience gave up on that as an option. But the red color I scored at the craft store was really pretty awesome.

To dye your beads place a small amount of dye powder in an inch or 2 of vinegar in a small cup. Add beads and allow tos it a few minutes. Rinse with cool water until it runs clear and allow to dry.

Now my beads would NOT dye in the center. I could sand each bead down so that this area would take on the color but that takes forever and I don’t have that kind of patience.

Instead, I decided to sort of tie-dye my beads by dyeing once side one color and the other another. It worked out really well for me but if you want solid colors, I might suggest the Unicorn Spit because it covered super well. The difference in color of some is stronger than others and I dig the variety.

Dye all of your beads or dye about half (I went with half) and seal them all with spray polyurethane. Allow to dry fully.

To make our trivet we’re going to string our fun and colorful beads onto the leather cord. I ordered leather but got suede and it was kind of a mess. Suede is not as strong and when you try and tie it really tight it will quite often snap. Plus it will shed suede “stuff” that makes a total mess. Suede works, but leather is better.

Today I’m making 3 rounds of beads that will be a single trivet but you can also make 3 individual trivets that will nest together, too.

You can play around with the number of beads and the sizes they make if you’d like or you can mimic the number I used that I found to work well. I used 9 on my inner round, 17 in the middle, and 24 on my outer for a total of  50 beads used for one trivet/trivet set. p.s. if you buy your beads here at Amazon, you’ll have enough to make 2 trivet/trivet sets as there is 100 pieces per order.

I played around with different amounts of beads and what I found worked best for the inner ring is 9 total (though this pic shows 10). Pull your beads nice and tight into a circle and knot your cord as close to the beads as possible.

If you want to create 3 separate trivets that you can stack tie your cord into a loop like you see here. This makes the trivets easy to hang.

They can easily stack when you stagger the hanging cords.

But since my cords kept snapping and breaking (darn SUEDE!) I decided to head ’em off at the pass and cut the cord close to the knot, shoving the knot into a bead to hide it away.

Then I took another length of cord, around 18 inches, and tied it to my 3 rounds of beads like so to hold them into a single piece. Then I tied the string tightly (but not so tightly that it would snap, seriously, go with leather, folks) to keep them cleanly together.

Then I tied another knot at the end to act as a single hanger for the whole piece.

Boom. Check that baby out. It’s knot going anywhere. For now. :) In all honesty, I’ve ordered some more leather cord and when it arrives I’m going to take this apart and put it back together, I think, as 3 trivets instead (the original plan).

Largely ’cause this is the way it hangs. Now I could add more cords at, like, 3 and 6 and 9 o’clock to keep them as a round but, surprise, surprise, I ran out of suede when it kept breaking off. Now it works well enough. You lay it on the table and sort of slide your hand over it and they easily fall into place becoming 4 round shapes nesting, again, but this looking hanging isn’t my thing, I think. And besides, when I haven’t mastered the one-pot meal, quite yet, and cook with every pan I have in existence making more trivets a better option for me!

But at the end of the day, I am loving how fun my trivets are with a few natural beads and some crazy tie-dyed action going on with the rest and even though I’m going to change it up a bit, what I’ve got here is perfectly useable and totally awesome looking. It’s a win in my book!

Oh, yeah, and it properly works as a trivet, too. Like, totally works. Double win!!!