Years and years ago, in one of our cross country moves, the con-artist movers we hired – the same ones who destroyed our china with glee and dodged our phone calls for weeks while we slept on the ground – made off with the box marked “Jewelry”. I’m sure they were disappointed when they opened it and it consisted solely of worthless beads.
Since then I’ve been slowly rebuilding my collection, which is difficult for me to do since I am a cheapskate, who refuses to buy even the cheapest jewelry because I’m capable of making it myself. But I didn’t do it very often. Certainly not often enough to keep up with trends.
I finally decided I must do something, and then I ended up at Michael’s on a day when they had all of their beads on sale at half off. Between what I already had waiting for me to get around to, and the haul I made at Michael’s, I had to start producing something if I wanted to get the drawers to close in my studio.
I have much to show you. I’ll probably have to draw it out for a while. But for today I thought I’d start with the simplest. The necklace in the top photo is just a bunch of beads strung on fishing line. I didn’t have any necklaces that were long, so I just kept threading and threading until it reaches down to my waist.
For this bracelet, I used the same principle. I had a whole mess of these beads passed on to me so I just kept threading until I ran out. I wanted to use this as a bracelet, so instead of just tying the ends together I tied them onto a magnetic clasp. The magnet isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the beads if I wanted to wear it as a necklace, but it’s the best possible thing for trying to put on a bracelet one handed.
I made a similar wrap style bracelet out of these beads, but I deliberately strung all the beads together by color. It looks kind of weird all layed out….
But when you wrap it around your wrist all those beads line up and it looks like you’re wearing stacked bangles.
I’ve got lots more to come, and I’ve sorted them based on technique. So by the end of this series you’ll have enough jewelry making skills to make all kinds of stuff on your own.
