So today’s bracelet is simple. It only needs a few supplies and a couple of tools but those supplies are rather specific.
And you want to cut yourself pieces that are your preferred bracelet length plus an inch and a half. And when you cut memory wire don’t use your regular wire nippers, you’ll ruin them. This is very hardened metal. You can buy special memory wire snips or you can do what I do and ask your husband for a junky old pair of pliers.
You could see these are wreck so it doesn’t matter if they get a little bit more nipped by the hard wire. And then the next thing that you’ll need are spacer bars and you can usually buy them in sets like this package had six. And they’ll have different amounts of holes. These have three holes so I’ve cut three pieces of memory wire. And then you’ll need beads and you can use any beads you want. The only limitation is that they all have to be the same size, so these are all six millimeter beads. They don’t all have to be the same shape, just all the same size, otherwise it won’t work.
I spent quite some time pulling out beads that I thought would look good together and when I finally settled on this combination of the two oranges and the fuchsia and the red, I just said, “Hmm, juicy. It just looked yummy.” So I’m going to mix all of these beads together. There, now doesn’t that look delicious? So then the only other tool that you will need is a pair of round-nosed pliers. If you’re using three strands and six millimeter beads, you’ll need about 80 beads but it all depends on how many strands and size of your beads. And then for each of your pieces of wire, just take your round-nosed pliers and make a loop in one end. Now it can be a little hard to make loops in this hardened wire but you can do it, you just have to kind of muzzle it around and do that for all three of your pieces of wire.
So once you have all your loops made, you can just go ahead and start stringing on your beads and I’m going to start with just one of the wires that I’m going to have three beads at the end and then each spacer bar will have four beads in between it. And I’m just going to pick up whichever bead my hand comes to next. I’m not going to worry about trying to make it random, it will be random. And make sure these spacers have rhinestones on one side and plain on the other so make sure that you always put each one on facing the same way.
So a spacer bar and then four beads. As far as finishing the ends of memory wire, you actually can buy a little caps that are made just for memory wire ends that you can glue on which is maybe in a slightly nicer look but I do like knowing that my loop is very secure and no beads are going to fall off. A little glue on piece can fall off but a loop isn’t going to. All right. So I’m just checking to make sure I put those on the right way and then we’ll just continue. So I have one strung and you could see I have my spacer bars going the right way and I checked the length on my board and it’s just about right.
I did allow a bit of extra wire just to account for the size of the loops and also if you have very thick beads you may need a slightly larger bracelet. But now that I have this done I’m going to cut this off with about a half of an inch here left after the last bead. I got my big honk and ugly pliers. Watch out for those because this is hardened wire, those things go flying and then we’ll just make another loop. And now what you do for the next one, so we’re going to string three beads on the end and then go through the middle hole of the spacer bar and then repeat four beads, in through the middle hole of the next one, and keep going all the way around.
And here’s the end of the second row and just repeat. Make sure this is pulled out snug before you snip your wire and repeat to cut it off. Don’t poke anybody in the eye out with flying pieces of wire. Make a loop and then repeat one last time to add the third wire and the third row of beads. Now I just wanted to show you something here. The third row can be a bit difficult just because you got all these hardened wire trying to go its own way. So I found what you can do is actually work near the end of the wire and that way you don’t have to twist and kink it to get it through.
So I’ve got my four beads here and then I’m just going to put that through the end through and then pull it out enough to string on my next four beads. And that will keep you from distorting your wire as you’re pulling it through the last one. And then you can just pull it up snug for the very last. Add the last three beads and make your last loop. And there you have it, a cuff bracelet. And what’s nice about using the memory wire is that the size is adjustable. If you like you can use jump rings to dangle charms off of the loops or if you make it a little bit bigger you can make it a bangle and then connect these loops together with jump rings and/or charms.
Post time: Aug-25-2017