Thrift Store Score: Craft a Rustic Wood Bead Garland with Upcycled Finds

In today’s thrifted fall decor post, I’m going to show you how I turned some discarded decorative wooden balls into a beautiful wood garland! I spent less than $15 on three packages of these dated decor pieces and used a few materials and some elbow grease to turn them into something wonderful.

My inspiration was a gorgeous wood bead garland photo that showed some wooden beads held together with a beautiful jute rope. I love this big and chunky look for fall, especially when it involves wood!

This was such a simple DIY! Here’s what you need: 

Tools and Materials List 

• Thrifted decorative wooden balls 

• Power sander with clamp (one option for sanding)

• Dremel with sanding drum CDN or USD (I found this worked better!) 

• Drill (use a bit of an appropriate size for whatever twine you will use)

• Special Walnut stain 

• Wire 

• Twine 

• Cardboard

Watch All of my Budget Thrift Flip Decor Ideas for Fall

Making the Garland 

I sorted through the packages of balls and picked out the round(ish) ones that would work best for my garland purposes. I started sanding them down with my power sander (clamped to the table so I could hold the ball with two hands as I sanded). But I decided that my dremel with the sanding drum worked better for me!  

Then:

• I used my drill to make a hole in the centre of each ball.

• I stained each ball with Special Walnut. 

• I taped my twine to a piece of wire and threaded it through each ball. 

Next, it was time to make tassels for the ends!

• I looped the twine around and around a piece of cardboard until I thought it was thick enough to be a tassel.

• Then I tied it off at one end, slid it off the cardboard, cut the loop on one side, and tied a small piece of twine at one end to finish it off.

• I tied the tassel onto the end of the garland.

• I repeated the steps one more time to make a tassel for the other end. 

And that’s it!  

I think this garland will be absolutely beautiful styled on top of a stack of books coming out of a bowl, and I love that I made it myself. 

Stay tuned for more fall thrifting flips and DIYs!