Hooked on Needles

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Easy Beaded Shade Pull

A while back I showed how to make a few different designs of Crocheted Shade Pulls. They are listed as Vintage Shade Pull #1, #2 and #3 here under Crochet Patterns if you would like to take a look at them. This time, however, I have made a very easy Beaded Shade Pull to share with you.

I love getting out all my Beading Stuff to play around with colors and designs. I had fun making my Beaded Stitch Markers for knitting. They are very pretty and very practical if you're a knitter. Today I was looking to make something a little more homey, and my old inexpensive (read CHEAP!) roller shades in my bedroom sure could use a little lift, so here's what I did:


Easy Beaded Shade PullI got out My Stuff -- once again all the usual suspects: various boxes of beads and accessories, my handy never ending roll of monofilament, the large plastic rings I bought for the crocheted shade pulls but didn't use, a package of various sizes of sparkling gems I found at Michael's, my fancy scissors all dressed up in their own Beaded Scissor Fob, and of course my glasses.

I started playing around with bead combinations and this is what I ended up with:

Easy Beaded Shade PullAt the bottom, I wanted something substantial so I chose the small diamond shaped "gem" from the box of Sparkling Gems. They also came in faceted ball shapes and a much larger diamond shape. I wasn't looking for Gaudy, and would have preferred something more colorful, but I did want something that would be easy to grab on to, so the small diamond gem was it.

I strung it onto a length of fishing line and then strung a round red bead and a diamond white bead onto each end of the line. I picked out a flat red bead to bring the two lines together and fed both ends of the line into it, thus making a single string of beads continuing to the top. I continued picking out and stringing beads until I had the length I wanted.


Easy Beaded Shade PullAfter I had strung all the beads to make the length I wanted, I wrapped the remaining line around the large plastic ring several times and then tied it to the line at the top of the beads to secure it. I fed the tails of the line back down through several of the beads and trimmed off the excess. Here you could put a dot of glue or clear nail polish onto the knot for extra holding power, but I did not.


Easy Beaded Shade PullI brought my newly made Beaded Shade Pull and my scissors up to my bedroom and picked the lucky shade that was going to get a little makeover today. I pulled out the plastic stick thingy from the pocket at the bottom of the shade so the end was just past the halfway point and I cut a slit straight up from the bottom, making sure I didn't cut through to the body of the shade itself. (As much as I'd like to replace these shades with something nicer, I don't really want to do it today!)

Then I put the plastic ring up into the slit, pushed the shade stick through the ring and back through the other side of the shade pocket


Easy Beaded Shade PullYou can see how it's put back together in this picture.



Easy Beaded Shade PullAnd there's my Easy Beaded Shade Pull hanging pretty in my bedroom window! If I had waited about six more weeks to take this picture, you could have seen how beautiful the leaves are here in the fall.



Easy Beaded Shade PullHere you can see the shade pull hanging quite long in the window. You can make your own shade pulls as long as you need them to be. Being vertically challenged as I always have been and always will be, longer shade pulls are necessary on every shade in my house!

The walls in our bedroom are a deep rich red so the red beads in the shade pull work nicely in this room.

Pick a shade in your house and dress it up a little. I'd love to see what you come up with.

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