wrap it up

With December just around the corner I planned to create a tutorial for wrap, or ladder, bracelets similar to the ones I have in my etsy shop. They’re pretty straightforward to make even if you haven’t made any jewelry and the material combinations are endless. The bracelet or anklet you make can be as individual as the person you plan to give it to.
Luckily I was on Pinterest and realized all the hard work has been done! Let me introduce you to Adrianne of Happy Hour Projects who focuses on quick and easy projects you can do in an hour or less. Her Double Wrap Bracelet tutorial is great – well written with lots of pictures and notations.
This tutorial suggests cutting your thread to any workable length and tying on more as needed. I haven’t done that and certainly intend to try it out. My experience with single-wrap length bracelets is 8 feet of thread, folded in half is needed. “Tending” to tangle is an understatement.

the new and the old

I posted quite a backlog of items on etsy today [trigonetsy.etsy.com] which got me to thinking about some of my original pieces. The necklace in the image is one of the first necklaces I made. It’s circa junior high and, as I couldn’t drive at this point, I had to talk my mom into stopping to let me browse at a new bead store that had opened. I was dying to stop in because the owner had opened her shop in an old caboose. A bead store in a caboose, the novelty of it called out to me. The story diverges here. First, in retrospect, the shop probably didn’t last very long because the only aisle from front to back was about 18″ wide. Two was a crowd. Second, with the exception of that 18″ wide aisle, every square inch of that place was filled with shelf after shelf of beads and it was a hundred times better than a candy store. When I found these garnet colored glass beads, oh, they were a treasure. A treasure that would wipe out my entire saved up allowance. I wanted seven but I bought six so I could afford the silver beads between them. Somehow they were the most wonderful beads I’d ever possessed and nothing I strung with it was good enough. They were a necklace, a bracelet, back to a necklace – always torn apart within a week. Almost a year later a friend was getting rid of a purse. A purse that had a strap made out of a chain. It’s been a bit longer than week and it’s still intact and still one of my favorite necklaces.

pinterest joy

I mentioned in another post I’ve joined the pinterest phenomenon. Basically I use it as a visual bookmarking system with two results. 1) I can login to pinterest and pretty instantly see something joyful. That’s pretty cool in this crazy world of information overload. 2) I remember the DIY projects I want to try. Also cool because I’ve actually done some*.
How does one add even more joy to this marvel? I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I remembered a DIY project a friend had pinned… and made it for her for her birthday. Joyful for her, joyful for me. Who says pinterest is a worthless time suck?

* The whole cutting glass without cutting glass scenario… unsuccessful for me. Nail polish remover wouldn’t even light the (yes, 100% cotton) string on fire. To get the glass to break at all I wrapped the string four times around a bottle after soaking it in lighter fluid. There may have been some jokes about burning the house down. After about a minute heating the glass up I dropped it in the cool water and the cut was crooked and both pieces had veins of shattering going perpendicular to the main cut. Oh well, it was a lot of fun to attempt, anyway.