Ahtee's Blog: bracelets

Since Thursday, my world has been a lot of this:

Dog-sitting for my friends. The pups seem to really like the boyfriend.

Especially Indy, short for Indiana Bones. He likes to snuggle Rod when he's on the couch.

Wee little Etsy shop update this week.

These bracelets are now in the bracelet section. Double strand, braided, mother of pearl buttons... FUN colors. Perfect for the beach, I think.

Another wire wrap bracelet, similar to this one... but in pastel colors. Loving the palette here.

And I made this one for a man. Not a specific man, but a man nonetheless. Buffalo nickel button!

I have a show coming up in July! Isn't that exciting? I will do a whole blog post about that... next week. Right now, puppies and boyfriend need cuddles. :P

Happy weekend, everyone!

[Wordy and picture heavy... sorry! Scroll down toward the bottom for the completed stack if you wanna skip over the story... I don't mind... promise! :-)]

The big reveal is here! Tracy Statler over at makebraceletsblog.com put together this lovely blog hop challenge of putting together a collection of bracelets that wrap, stack, and layer. Wrapped, stacked, and layered bracelets are all the rage right now. I don't make many bracelets for myself so I took this challenge to create a collection of bracelets just for me!

The challenge:
-Gather bracelets, making at least one or two, into a new and wonderful collection of decadent arm candy!
-The minimum was 3 bracelets total, but the more the merrier.
-"Have fun and mix colors, textures, and different materials." = Straight from Tracy's post about the challenge!
-And of course, photograph said bracelets!

Here we go! (Sorry in advance for the long story :P)

To tell you the truth, I completely forgot about this challenge until Tracy sent out the reminder email 11 days ago. Things have been really crazy on my end with sales picking up (YAY!) and new designs spilling out of my head. I remember clearly the morning I got the email. I had a rough night of no sleep, a common enough thing lately but that morning was really really rough. I happened to go on Facebook and watched this video of an Alzheimer patient listening to music and just coming alive at the sound of his favorite songs. This video had me in tears and missing my grandfather. He died just a few years ago and every now and then, I get hit with a massive wave of longing to see him and hear his voice. He wasn't really there toward the end of his life. It was very sad and I was very angry Alzheimer's. But every time he relearned my name, he would sing the song "Rose Marie." And when my mother put music on for him, he would sway in his wheelchair and sing and hum with the music. It was such a beautiful thing.

I finally fell asleep that morning around 9am and woke at noon after dreaming I was back in my grandfather's garden, picking broccoli with him. You see, he was an agricultural professor in the Philippines and loved plants and nature. And I like to think I get that from him.

My hand reached for my phone, as it always does every morning, to check my email and there was Tracy's reminder email. And I knew, just knew, one of my bracelets was going to feature natural beads to remind me of my Lolo.

These are big-leaf maple tree seed beads. They're made from actual seeds. I bought these beads thinking of my Lolo and have been waiting for the perfect project to work them into and this challenge was it.

I knew I wanted to use some of the silk sari ribbon I bought a few weeks ago. The rolled ribbon has such a beautiful, colorful, and organic look to it. I used some waxed Irish linen cord as my anchor cords, a coconut disk and crystal rondelle for a clasp, and made some square knots for this bracelet. If you need a tutorial for a square knot bracelet, Rebecca wrote a lovely tutorial for Art Bead Scene you should check out! For the hole for the coconut disk to slip into, I just did two over hand knots leaving a space for the clasp to slide into.

Playing off of the colors of my first bracelet, I knew I wanted to have something with a little more sparkle. Something with way more color to it because while the ribbon I used is very colorful, the strips I ended up using didn't have much variation.

So, I grabbed a bunch of seed beads for color...

... and some silver star dust beads for some sparkle (along with some peridot chips... my birthstone, btw :D)...

... added some memory wire and made myself a second bracelet! The seed beads I used here are size 8. Some are silver lined some are matte and with the sparkly star dust beads and organic peridot chips, this bracelet is so fun! I love the texture and the sparkles.

I added a leaf charm and Czech glass flower to throw in a bit more of my nature theme into the bracelet.

Now, with the two bracelets together, I wanted to do a quick wrap bracelet.

Take some embroidery floss (I chose to use 2 colors here), some size 6 seed beads, and a size 3.75 hook and you can whip up a quick and colorful wrap bracelet. I didn't really follow a tutorial for the beaded crochet chain. I just sorta winged it. I'm sure if you Google "crochet bead chain," you'll get some really awesome tutorials.