Follow along as I make this DIY wooden ball garland that’s great for any occasion and style. The garland is simple and easy to craft as well!

Today I’m making a simple DIY wooden ball garland that’s so easy to make and perfect for styling open shelves.

DIY wooden ball garland painted and threaded together with twin and put up on rustic shelves used as a decor item

I LOVE wood bead garland. While I guess they “technically” fall into a farmhouse/rustic style category, I think you can use them with any style. Especially when you change out the color!

You can actually buy your own wood bead garland for relatively cheap! Here are a few of my favorites:

Last year, I even made my own farmhouse-style wood bead garland! It’s an embarrassingly easy tutorial if you want to check it out 😉

how to make your own wood bead garland in a farmhouse style using multiple sizes of wood beads from giant to small

I wanted to switch it up a bit for this wood bead garland and make something a bit more modern.

On a trip to Michaels, I found these giant wood balls. After a quick call to my husband to make sure he could drill through these, I snagged 3 bags with a coupon (a total of 18 balls)!

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How to make a DIY wooden ball garland – step-by-step tutorial

Supplies

If you can’t find 1.5″ wood balls in store, they’re sold on Amazon, too
Paint (I used Behr Thermal)
Foam Brush
Twine
Drill (we used 5/32 bit but any small size bit will work)
little wood sticks

Step 1. Drill Holes in Wooden Balls

First, you need to drill holes in the wood balls. *BE CAREFUL*

Tightly hold the balls on top of a scrap piece of wood (we used a 2×4). Using the scrap wood provides for a clean hole when the drill bit exits the ball.

Then line up the drill bit with the center of the ball as best as you can. It won’t be perfect. Start drilling slowly until the hole is started then you can increase the speed until it’s drilled through.

Step 2. Insert Wooden Sticks

Once the holes were drilled, I used little wood sticks I had for whatever reason ( #crafthoarder ) to string the wood balls on. Then, I stuck the sticks through the sides of a cardboard box so it was easy to paint!

I chose the pretty green color because I have about 15 sample paint colors from trying to choose a color for the bathroom vanity.

Figured I should use them somewhere! Any color would do and that’s where this DIY can fit into any style. Use hot pink if you want! If you need some help deciding check out these 2023 Current Paint Color Trends by making manzanita

Step 3. Paint the DIY Wooden Ball Garland

Painting oversized wood bead garland with a green paint to completely cover and coat wooden balls with sticks in-between

It was easy to spin the balls around on the wood stick thing. They were all painted in 10 minutes! I did go back and do a very rough second coat to make sure they were all covered!

Using sticks and a carboard box to paint wooden beads to use for a garland is clean and simple

Step 4. Remove Sticks and Thread Twine

Once they were dry, I wrapped an end of twine very tightly in painter’s tape. If you wrap the twine a little farther in from the very end, you can snip off the unraveled ends and make it even easier to string.

Gold and white twine is a great thread to use when making a diy wooden ball garland out of oversized beads

Tape one end of the gold and white twine to keep the frayed ends down to be used for threading large beads together

Then, I simply strung all the painted beads onto the twine!

Showing how to thread a bead with white and gold twine that has been taped on end on a carboard box

Step 5. Secure Wooden Balls with Knots

Once they were all strung, I tied a couple of knots on each end so they wouldn’t fall off. I was going to make a tassel to go on either end but I’m happy with them just being plain for now.

I tossed them up on the DIY farmhouse shelves (still a favorite of mine!) alongside this chalkboard lettering sign. They’re the perfect addition.