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.

Wraparound Bracelets

Last month in Making Jewellery there was a feature by Clair Wolfe on wrap bracelets. Since I'm, for reasons previously mentioned, trying to move away from metal a bit more it was a really interesting technique to learn.


The premise is simple - a doubled-over leather cord, tied off to make a clasp, with beads strung between the two lengths. Here's what I've come up with in the last couple of weeks.

 

This is the first one I made, with 6mm wooden beads in two colours, imitation turquoise, and some blue-dyed freshwater pearls. The button clasp comes from an old coat.

After this I made three destash bracelets.

The first has a selection of random beads in wood and acrylic (purple, blue, imitation haematite and silver). They're quite chunky, and the bracelet wraps twice although it's too big to fit around my wrist.

For the second, I had some faceted blue acrylic beads, and decided to pair them with dark blue glass, and green semi-precious stones, to try and convey the feeling of light on water. The stones are flourite, I think, from an old elasticated bracelet. I used pale beige thread to keep it light.

This one wraps around three times and uses the rest of the 6mm wooden beads, as well as some wooden cubes and rondelles from a dismantled bracelet.








And then I made one for my boyfriend, because he complained I never make him anything, using 1cm beads in imitation turquoise, tiger's eye nuggets, glass cubes, and some leftover black and copper glass beads.

New Technique: Chain maille

One of the things I love about making jewellery is that there's so much to learn. I've a list of techniques and materials I want to try as long as my arm: polymer clay, needle felting, shrink plastic, other acrylics.

A technique that I did try recently was chain maille. Most of the examples I've seen have looked quite daunting - Byzantine and Japanese for example - and while the results are lovely I don't think I have the patience. However, I saw a reasonably simple project in a magazine (I can't for the life of me remember which one, but I'll dig it out at home for a proper credit). It involved a set of simple two-by-four-by-two links strung between beads on eyepins.

I already had the beads I wanted to use (foil lined purple glass beads, and glass amethyst beads from Beads Direct), and a random selection of bead caps from various places, so I stocked up on about 200 8mm silver jump rings and got to work.

The first thing I discovered is chain maille, even the simple stuff, is hard. Not just keeping track of where the rings are (and this was fairly simple) but also in opening an closing all those jump rings. If I'm going to make it a regular thing I'll need to invest in a jump ring tool or a second set of flat-nosed pliers. Opening by hand and pliers just won't cut it - after a very short time my fingers ached and my nails were shredded. I switched to round-nosed pliers in my other hand (the only alternative I had) but that was fiddly and awkward.

The easiest way to get through the large number of jump rings to link was to do them in sections and link to beads with 5mm rings as I went. That kept it from getting too tedious. It turned out I had enough beads to do two short necklaces. I did try for one long one, but the amount of glass made it far too heavy.

After this there were still quite a few of the of the smaller beads left, so I made a bracelet and earrings to complete the set.

Introduction

Back in November, I stumbled into making jewellery.

Stumbled is the right word, really. I was browsing Etsy, looking for a Steampunk necklace. I bought one I liked, then somehow ended up buying some charms and findings as well. Before I knew it I'd added to the collection: beads, more charms, charity shop finds to dismantle. A couple of magazines later and I was making my own necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

This wasn't one of my first projects, but it's the one that means most to me so far. When I was eight or so I had a leaf charm bracelet. It jangled with metal and plastic charms in dark colours, bronze and purple. I loved it, but it was quite conspicuous and I was not a confident child. I stopped wearing it, and because I wasn't wearing it eventually got rid of it.

I've really regretted it, and taking up making my own jewellery seemed to be the perfect cue to replicate at least the feel of that long-gone bracelet. I bought some glass leaf charms...

... and some antiqued bronze charms from Etsy, and along with some charms taken from charity-shop necklaces I made this.

The chain is a shortened charity shop find in an antique colour. It's not the same as the bracelet I used to have, but it jangles pleasantly and I really like wearing it. It's a little heavy on the bronze charms at the moment, but I aim to replace sme of them as I come across other leaf charms I like. On the whole I'm very pleased with it though.