St. Patrick’s Day garland

This black, white and green St. Patrick’s Day garland with painted wood beads and yarn covered shamrocks is not only trendy and cute, it is fun to make! Learn how to make your own garland today!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!! I am back with my last St. Patty’s Day craft with no time to spare. Better late than never though, right!! I am sharing this adorable St. Patrick’s Day garland with wood beads and fuzzy yarn covered shamrocks.

I shared this easy wood bead shamrock garland earlier this week in my St. Patrick’s Day mantel decor post. Now you get to see how I made it! Make sure you pin this post for next year because I know you will want to make one for yourself. 😉

I really love how it turned out and it is right on trend with the wood beads. Plus, I think with the beads being painted black and white, it adds a little more pizzazz. It also ties the garland in with the rest of the mantel perfectly.

This St Patrick’s Day garland would be easy to switch up for different holidays. Wouldn’t these black and white beads look fabulous on a Halloween garland? Just swap out the shamrock shapes for pumpkins, ghosts or bats and you have an adorable garland for another holiday!

Another bonus is that this was very inexpensive to make! Most of the items I used to make it, I already had on hand. Even if you don’t have everything on hand already, it is budget friendly. 🙂

WATCH THE QUICK VIDEO

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make this St Patrick’s Day garland. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies for St. Patrick’s Day garland

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

• Natural Wood Beads (14mm) – you will need 55 beads in total
• Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
• Dark green chenille yarn
• Thin cardboard
• Jute twine
• Scissors
• Shamrock template
• Card stock
• White and black acrylic paint
• Foam brush
• Large embroidery needle

PRINT OUT THE SHAMROCK TEMPLATE

The first step is to print out the shamrock template onto a piece of card stock. Any light colored card stock will work, just use whatever you have around. When you are printing, make sure you print this template at 100% to make sure the size is correct. Every printer is different so just make sure your settings are not set to ‘fit to page‘ or that the box is not checked letting your printer make changes.  The printed shamrock template should be 4.25″ in height and width. After you print the shamrock, just cut it out with some sharp scissors.

How to make yarn wrapped shamrocks

We need to make a thicker shamrock form so the next step in making the shamrocks is to cut them out of some thin cardboard. Take the shamrock template and trace it onto the cardboard six times. This is pretty self explanatory, but if you want a visual, you can see how this is done in the video. I just used some cardboard from a box we had lying around.

The shamrocks are wrapped with some fuzzy chenille yarn. This gives them a nice velvet look, and they are so soft. I love the texture that they have! To start wrapping the yarn, I began on the stem. Hot glue some yarn down on the end of the stem first. Then add hot glue on the stem and wrap the yarn around it until you reach the very top. Usually I only added hot glue to back side of the shamrock. You can always add glue on the front if you feel like you need it.

Next, take the yarn up over the inside corners of the shamrock. You want to make sure all the deep corners are covered.

Start wrapping the yarn around one of the side leaves. It is best to start with the leaf that your yarn is already on. Add some hot glue to the back of the shamrock, and wrap the yarn around up to junction of the curves. 

Wrap the small curves one at a time. Add glue to the front, back and edge of the top curve. Wrap yarn around the front and back of the curve and cut off the yarn leaving just enough to cover the edge. Press the yarn down so it conforms to the shape of the leaf. Repeat this process for the bottom curve.

Then you have the first leaf done.

Rinse and repeat

Continue wrapping each leaf using the same process. 

After you finish wrapping the top leaf, you will be left with a small triangular patch in the middle on both sides of the shamrock.

To fill in this center space, add hot glue to the whole area and add yarn going around the outside of the triangle first working inward. Cut off the yarn leaving just enough to fill in the last bit and gently tap the yarn down. Repeat this process on the other side of the shamrock as well.

Wrap all six shamrocks. This is a great thing to do while you are watching a mindless show on TV. Kill two birds with one stone. 🙂 Set aside the shamrocks for later when we add them to the garland.

How to paint wood beads

I have painted wood beads for several previous projects and have used a different way each time. For my DIY wood bead feather ornament, I held them in my fingers and painted them with a brush. On my wood bead Christmas tree ornaments, we spray painted them and used a hanger to hold them.  For my DIY wood bead stocking tags, I used a bamboo skewer to hold the beads and a foam brush to paint the beads. You can paint the beads using any of these techniques, but for this project, I chose to use the bamboo skewer technique.

Paint 27 of the beads white and the 28 of the beads black.

As you work, set the dry beads on a paper towel in case there are still any wet paint spots.

String the St Patrick’s Day garland

Cut a length of twine to 70 inches. String a large blunt embroidery needle onto one end.  

Fold the twine in half to find the center of the length. It is easiest to work from the center out. String on seven beads, starting and ending with black beads. Move the beads to the center of the twine. 

Next you will tie a shamrock on both sides of the beads. To tie the shamrock on, I placed it face down on the table next to the beads. Work a loop of twine into the yarn on the backside of the top leaf of the shamrock, right under the left curved portion. Run your needle and twine up through the loop and and then through the big opening to right of the loop to essentially tie it onto the garland. Pull the excess twine tight. 

Make another knot under the right curve. You want two knots so the shamrock sits level. Then continue stringing on beads on both sides starting with white beads this time.

Continue with this pattern until you have attached all six of the shamrocks.

On each end, add ten beads instead of seven. Tie a loop on each end to hang the garland from.

Now you have a beautiful St. Patrick’s day garland with wood beads and yarn shamrocks. 

Hang up your shamrock garland

I used my garland on my mantel, but you can use it anywhere. It would look great on a console table, strung across a mirror or even a bookshelf. Pair this garland with a cute sign and it is an easy way to add in a little decor for this holiday. I like to use command hooks to hang my garlands, since they are temporary decorations.

Isn’t it super cute!? Oh yeah, make sure you are wearing green so you don’t get pinched. 😉 Chat soon!