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.

Steampunk fossil necklace

One of the things that made me decide to make my own jewellery was when I found this bead on Etsy.

 

It came from a shop called Impossible Fossils, which specialises in steampunk resin beads. I had this one for ages before I had the vaguest idea what to do with it. In the end I decided to use it as the focal bead for a steampunk necklace.

The problem was that it wouldn't fit on a jump ring, and I didn't have any wire, so I used an antique bronze headpin and made a loop at the top. I hung a white glass pearl from the top to embellish the plain wire. On either side of the focal bead I hung charms made from silver and amber beads, pearls, and watch parts to create my first steampunk charm necklace.