Painting The Elephant Beads
- Once the beads are dry set up your painting table with paint trays, lots of pots of clean water and extra pots/jam jars to rest the wooden skewers in. We found it’s best to work in groups of 8/10 children with a teacher or helper for each group.
- Gently push each bead onto a skewer for easy handling. For best results and to get clear bright paint colour, give each bead a coat of white acrylic paint. You can add a little water to thin the paint for this step. Rest the skewers in a pot making sure the beads aren’t touching.
- Let’s take the elephant design as our first bead. Holding the skewer with a white bead on it paint the whole bead with the colour shown on the design chart. Set aside to dry. Then using a fine brush carefully paint a band of white paint around it. That’s it! Your first bead! Rest the skewer in a pot. Once the bead is dry gently ease it off the skewer storing it in a tray until you are ready to commence stringing.
- Continue with each bead design until you have the seven required for each string.
Be patient, take your time. You will gain immense pride in creating something that will be sold to help the future of an elephant.
