beads | A Spacious Blog

Mardi Gras is upon us once again! We made festive masks and beaded necklaces with our groups last week.

Some tips if you’d like to do this activity with your own group:

We chose to do four different mask shapes; our participants love the variety!
You’re going to want good scissors to cut out the outsides of the masks, and a sharp craft knife to cut out the eye holes. Trust me on that part.
To help the cords stay put in the masks, we put a piece of tape over that area of the back of the mask before punching the holes. The tape doesn’t hold down the cord, but it does help reinforce the posterboard of the mask itself.
We actually tied the cord to one end of the mask ahead of time, even before the participants had decorated them, as it eliminated a step (we didn’t have to hand out cords that the participants would need to keep track of, nor tie them twice for every participant). Streamlining the process can be very helpful!
For the beaded necklaces, we pre-cut the cord to a certain length, and made a mark on the cord about two inches from the end (using white cord, we just added a dot with a marker). We then explained to the participants to please keep their beads between the two dots, so there is enough room to tie a knot. The visual reference seems to help.
Of course green, yellow, and purple are traditional Mardi Gras colors, and we mentioned that to our participants, but we provided markers, feathers, and sequins of all colors. Everyone could use whatever they gravitated toward that day.