Beaded Bamboo Curtains

Steve: My friend Kelly is the biggest ticky freak. She has a ticky bedroom, a ticky kitchen, even a ticky bathroom. So we decided we are going to make her ticky curtains for her birthday. And Cathie has already started. Cathie: Things are turning out so cool. We're finishing up our last strand and we’ll show you how to do it. To get started, all you're going to need are some wooden beads, some clear straws, we're using this groovy yarn, Bamboo skewer or a large eye needle, scissors, and that’s about it. The basic idea is this. We’re taking some yarn and we're going to thread clear straws and beads on to it to create this kind of faux bamboo look. Now you can personalize this to any size window, doorway that you want. This is Kelly’s exact measurement. Steve: All we've done is taken a 7 foot piece of yarn, some wooden beads, and some straws and threaded them through. So its bead, straw, bead, straw, bead, straw. Cathie: Once you get all those beaded up, you just going to tie it to a bamboo rod like that. Steve: Alright, so I have one more string to string up and we're going to be done. What we're going to do is we're going to tie a knot on the bottom. I like to double knot it because I'm going to be stringing a bead down. We've chosen wooden beads, but you just have to make sure that your yarn will fit through the whole of whatever bead you're using. So it doesn’t necessarily only have to be a wooden bead. And all you do, so you take your yarn, push it through the bead. So I'm using this wooden skewer to put my yarn through my bead. Cathie: You can also use a large eye needle like this. You usually find like needle point section of any kind of fabric store. Steve: Great, and there we go. Boom. There's your base, right there. I've chosen this color yarn because it’s kind of multi colored. This is also kind of earthy, it’s got some earth tones in it. But you can use greens and reds and purples and whatever you want to match your own wall colors or your whole style of your room. Cathie: So we got these clear straws that are restaurant supply. We got a huge box of like 8,000 of them. I think it goes about 10 bucks, so we can make a lot of curtains. And we're just taking them and randomly cutting them into different lengths. You see here in our curtain, we got some long pieces and some short pieces. Steve: Yeah, and we also separated them quite a bit. You can put them tighter together if you want too. But this is going in between Kelly’s living room to kitchen. So she doesn’t want it completely covered, it’s a passageway. So she can actually see through it. Next, we're going to put a straw in. so the way I'm doing this is exact same way I'm doing the bead. Pushing the yarn right through. So there it is. One bead, one straw. Cathie: Once you get your last bead on, tie a knot like so. Just like that. Steve: So we have tied this about an inch apart. Cathie: If you want, you can add a little tacky glue to right where you're tying on, that way it won't get any slippage. Steve: Now these can be hang by curtain rods very easily. They can go over windows, over doorways. Cathie: Ready? Steve: Yup. How does it look? Cathie: I think it looks great. Steve: So do I. Cathie: Now we got the bamboo at a garden center. And we found this netting in a party supply store. I think it’s the perfect little topper for it. It’s going to look excellent in her house. Steve: It’s very ticky.