Tween Party Ideas – Paper Beaded Curtain

It is official I have a true tweener. We searched for some fabulous tween party ideas for her birthday that suited her. She came up with a 60s themed birthday party, which I was one of the best tween party ideas for her ever. Check out next week when I show you how we rocked out this tween birthday party with other tween party ideas: 60’s tie dye headbands and the beaded key chain crafts. Then the awesome 60’s peace sign birthday cake. Linking up at Pin It Wednesday Linky Party.

Tween Party Ideas – Paper Beaded Curtain

Little miss already had a huge tie dyed peace sign and a flower power sign in her room she got from my neighbor. These are what we used for the main inspiration for all of our tween party ideas. Peace, love and tie dye. In order to stick with the 60s theme I knew we needed a beaded curtain. I didn’t have one and I needed one that would cover the entry way, which is 6 1/2 feet across. So I needed to make one and didn’t have a clue where to start. I am not buying a ton of beads and stringing them.

I was looking around a few sites and saw someone had made a wind catcher by sewing paper rectangles together. If you were sitting in front of me you would have been blinded by the light of my little idea light bulb going off! I could make a paper beaded curtain using a large round punch and sew them together. Here is one of my tween party ideas…

60’s inspired paper beaded garland materials:

1 Large Paper Punch

Lots of scrapbook paper with designs with colors for your theme

1 Sewing machine

1 Spool thread (coordinating color or white)

1 Ribbon or bias tape

Directions how to make a paper beaded curtain

1. First pick a dominate color theme and tear a bunch of scrapbook paper out with those colors. While the overall theme was tie dye, orange is Little Miss’ favorite color. So we went with red and orange scrapbook paper for one of our tween party ideas.

2. Punch out about a billion circles! Fold the paper in half to speed up the process. I had a 2.5in circle punch and could get 16 circles out of one piece of scrapbook paper.

3. Mix up all your punched colored circles, so there are not any two like designs together. Great job for the birthday girl to do! Make sure they are all face up and put them back into a large stack.

4. Bust out the sewing machine. Take a moment and dust it off and thread it up. I used a simple white thread for this project, since I wanted the string between the paper beads to be white.

5. To get started, hold two threads from the sewing machine and sew. This creates the beginning of the string of paper beads and will be very useful later. Now take two of the circles and put white sides together and sew.

6. Sew to the end of the paper circle. Now let the sewing machine sew for about and about an inch of nothing. This creates the string between the paper beads.

7. Repeat until you have the desired length for the curtain. I needed to cover about 8 feet down. I sewed 20 pairs of circles to nearly touch the ground.

8. Once around 10 or so rows of paper beads are sewn and there is enough to cover the opening, hand sew each strand of paper beads to a bias tape or a ribbon.

9. After this awesome paper beaded curtain is hanging, take each pair of circles and fold like sides together. I didn’t even think of this, my neighbor Cristal did after it was hanging! And wow what do you know; it really looks like a beaded curtain when you do this.

Of course my mind goes into a different direction from tween party ideas to thinking this would be an awesome paper Christmas ornament garland with red and green paper! Paper beaded garlands are a fun project to add a pop of color to any occasion. 

In all this project should only take a couple of hours, if you are not cursing your sewing machine like I was. For some reason whenever I start a project, that blasted thing I have for a sewing machine, keeps eating the thread and jamming. I adjust knobs here and there and finally I start sewing like a rock star. I probably need to take a sewing class and really learn how to sew. Until then I’ll just wing it! Check out the peace sign birthday cake we made for the party.