I have an obsession with wanting to make jewelry that tests my patience (of which I have very little). The first type of bracelet I attempted was a friendship bracelet. I used to make these a lot when I was younger, had no troubles at all. This time, we watched YouTube videos for about 1/2 hour before we even got started and it took us FOR-EV-VER to get them done!
My apologies for the quality of the shot, it’s from my phone. It was taken right before I shipped it off to my best friend in Taiwan!
The second bracelet I tried was a Chan Luu wrap bracelet. NBD right?? Wrong! It took 3 hours and it only wrapped three times. That’s 1 wrap/1 hour = not worth the $40 on materials.
Bracelet attempt #3 was a second Chan Luu wrap. This is what my expectations were and I wasn’t going to give up with a 3 hour wrap that’s so-so.
Isn’t it awesome? At $245, I thought I’d try it to DIM (do it myself). For my second attempt I spent more money ($85 for all materials) but I got better quality beads and leather.
So much cooler isn’t it?! I used turquois beads, a bone colored stone bead, and pyrite nuggets with dark brown leather.
My most recent bracelet en devour was a brass hex bracelet. It seemed easy enough to find the materials and couldn’t be too time consuming because most of the bracelet is braid, right? Hmph. I had to go to two hardware stores to find the correct nuts and twine and had to re-do the bracelet twice. The tutorial I followed was from Honestly…WTF? which has a lot of bracelet tutorials.
I purchased #8-32 brass hex nuts and white twine at home depot. I bought 6 packages of the brass nuts for $0.98/piece and the twine for around $3. (I used 24 nuts total for my bracelet but you can use as many or little as you think makes the bracelet your style.)
I cut three long pieces (two full arm spans) of twine and tied them together. Next, I threaded a nut onto the string and slid it to the knot.
The next step was to braid. I wanted to have two wraps around my wrist along with the nuts showing on my wrist. I found it easiest to have someone hold the end so I could quickly braid and de-tangle the knots (that are inevitable). If you don’t have someone to hold the end, clipping it to a clipboard or tying it to a doorknob would be helpful.
Once the braid was able to wrap twice, I started process of braiding the nuts on. For a more in-depth description, follow the tutorial link.
I proceeded to braid while putting a nut on every other string. Two helpful tips that the tutorial did not suggest:
1.) Tape the ends of the twine. If you are using leather or rawhide, you will be fine. If you are using twine it is much easier to thread the twine with the nuts if you have them wrapped like shoe lace aglet (of which I learned on Phineas & Ferb).
2.) DO NOT LET GO! Hold tight to the strings once you put the nut on. If you let go, it will start to unbraid and you will have to re-do it.
Braiding the end, after braiding the nuts, keeps the nuts secure and finishes the rest of the bracelet.
Once the braid is finished, put one last nut on the end and tie a knot. The bracelet should look something like this when finished:
I am a huge fan of it! This bracelet is great if you like layering bracelets on your wrist. I am also a huge fan of the pink and gold bracelet! (I think I’ll do that one next!) I LOVE this one too! What do you think? Are you a fan of bracelet layering? Have you spent way more time than intended on a jewelry making project?
