Patriotic Bracelet

So as I mentioned in my last post, I'm working on my crafts for a Patriotic-themed craft swap! Last time I basically did the same thing for both people but I used different colors. This time I wanted to make distinctly different crafts! So for one of my girls I'm making accessories, and I finished the first one last night! It's pretty simple, but I think it's cute!

 So here's what I used:

-- Jewelry Pliers

--Jewelry Eyepins

--Jewelry toggle

--Medium glass beads

--Paintbrush (not pictured--this was what I had close by for shaping the bracelet, but a pen or pencil or anything like that would work equally well)

If you don't have jewelry pliers, any needle-nosed pliers should work. If you can't find the eyepins (which are basically just wires that already have loops on one side) you can create your own with wire. I just already had some on hand so I figured I'd use them! If you don't like the toggles, a claw clasp or any other jewelry closure will work. 

So I started with one eyepin, and I opened the eye and added the "rod" part of the toggle to that and closed it. I then added beads so that the bottom part looks something like this:

Once you finish adding beads to your eyepin, you just slip the eye of another pin over your remaining wire and then close that extra wire up with your pliers:

It should look something like this:

NOTE: This is too many beads to do any sculpting/bending. If you want to leave them fairly straight or just have minimal curve, you can fill the eyepins all the way up. For my bracelet, I had to leave about 1 bead's worth of just wire showing. The more twisting and curving you want to do, the fewer beads you should use!

So once you finish adding beads and connecting your eyepins (I did 9--3 of each color), add the "loop" portion of the toggle. At this point you'll have something that looks much more like a bracelet than a necklace!

This is where my paintbrush came in. As I said, I just had it on hand (working on another craft) so that's what I used. I just held one end of the bracelet in place and slowly wound each piece around until it created a spiral shape. This may take some time to get it just right...it's certainly not an exact science. But it also leaves you with a chance to individualize your bracelet a bit! 

In the end, I was very pleased with the outcome! In fact, I'm thinking I might have to make one for myself as well!

Keep checking back. I have at least 2 more patriotic crafts and 2 more around-the-house crafts already in the works, and I can't wait to post them!

Love you all!!

-Kittye