This is a pretty short and easy tutorial but I think it's useful and clever! I imagine this would also be helpful if you needed to use foam balls to make larger beads, which would require filling/sealing in addition to painting. Plus the skewers would poke holes in them for you too.
This is how I painted the beads for my Bittersweet Lulu bracelets - costume gallery here.
YOU WILL NEED:
- beads and whatever you need to paint them
- wooden skewers (unless you have nice metal ones you don't mind sacrificing for cosplay)
- painter's tape (you could use any kind of tape but painter's tape is easiest to remove and re-use)
- a block of foam (I used pink foam because I have a ton of scraps, foam board or styrofoam works fine also)
1. Start by folding a strip of tape (about 2 inches long) at the bottom of a skewer. The tape not only keeps the beads in place, but also doubles as a handle of sorts so you can get a grip on the whole skewer while painting.
2. Add a bead, then another strip of tape. Leave a little room between the bead and the tape so the bead can slide around a bit - this makes it easier to maneuver the paint brush around it. (If you are painting details, put the tape flush with the beads so they don't move.) Repeat until the skewer is full, making sure you have tape strips on both ends. Do this for all your beads, unless you don't have enough skewers - then you'll want to make sure you're using painter's tape so you can easily remove and re-use the tape bits.
3. Start painting. To get better leverage over the beads in the middle of the skewer - without ruining the paint on the beads around it - hold on to the tape strip instead of the skewer.
4. Poke the skewer into a block of foam while the paint dries. If you have multiple skewers, try to place them so that the whole thing doesn’t tip over when you take one skewer out. The foam will also keep everything in place if you’re spray painting, just be sure to protect the foam so it doesn't melt (if you don't feel like using glue/gesso/mod podge you can always just put tape over it!)
5. Repeat until all beads are painted and dry!