Wrap Bracelet Project

I've never rage-quit a jewellery project before (although I do have a couple that have stalled until I figure how to make them work) so this was a new experience for me. I'd bought a bracelet kit from Spoilt Rotten Beads because I love wrap bracelets and loved the colour scheme.

The problem is, I'm really bad at judging the size of beads. Normally they're way bigger than I expect. This time they were way smaller. Generally I avoid small beads - seed beads are the absolute worst - but they weren't tiny so I decided to just get on with it.



Now I'm no stranger to making wrap bracelets, but the instructions were far from clear. At one point in the initial steps it had me add a bead and finish on the righthand side, but then the next step started on the left. After fifteen minutes of trying to figure it out, I quit.

Half an hour and some food later, I decided the best thing to do was start again, so I unpicked everything - not an easy task with small beads and thin cord. I couldn't figure it out the second time eather, but I muddled through and got to the next section. Things didn't improve. It would tell you to do things like pick up a bead, then move the thread like so and go back through the bead you'd just exited. Except it didn't mean that bead, it meant the one you'd exited before you picked up the new bead.

When I'd finally threaded on all the beads I hit upon another problem. The instructions tell you to keep adding beads until you're an inch short of the desired bracelet length, which would be 14 inches on average. It only gives you enough beads to make 10 inches. It doesn't indicate anywhere in the instructons or ingredients list that you might need to buy more beads. Finding out halfway through making it did not improve my mood. I had to tie it off there, shorter than I wanted it to be, and hope for the best.



It's supposed to be a double-wrap bracelet, and the beaded part doesn't even go around my wrist one and a half times. I have skinny wrists. The only way the kit as provided is going to do what it says in the instructions is if you make it for a child. It's the day after and I'm still mad. I means, it's wearable but it's not what I asked for. If I'd known I could have ordered extra beads and made it how I wanted.

To make things even more annoying, the cord isn't taut enough so the beads don't sit right. That's entirely my own fault. Although to be honest working with 3 metres of cord at once is too much, frankly, and something else this kit got wrong. I'll need to go back over the finished bracelet and double up on the thread of fix it - except I don't have any more of the cord I need.

I bought another kit at the same time, and I'm dreading starting that one. At least I'll know ahead of time to measure the beads out and see how long the thing will actually be, and can compensate. I won't be buying another kit from there, that's for sure.