I went on a bit of a bracelet kick this past week. You know how it is, sometimes you see a design and it just grabs you. A couple of weeks ago this bracelet design was featured on the
Artbeads web site and I just had to make it. This is the bracelet that got me to buy Swarovski crystals. I have resisted the sparkle for years, even though the bling is plentiful at the Bead & Button show every year. This is the
Emerald City bracelet. You can buy all of the materials right from the project page. Pretty clever of Artbeads...
List of Components:
Swarovski 5625 10mm 2-hole Stairway Bead Dark Moss Green (5625-DMG10, qty 19)
Swarovski 5000 5mm Faceted Round Crystal (5000-crys5, qty 32)
Swarovski 5000 3mm Faceted Round Crystal (5000-crys3, qty 40)
Swarovski 5328 3mm XILION Bicone Dark Moss Green (5328-DMG3, qty 24)
Swarovski 5328 3mm XILION Bicone Crystal (5328-crys3, qty 24)
Swarovski 5000 10mm Faceted Round Crystal (5000-crys10, qty 2)
I liked the design so much I bought more beads to make another bracelet in Amethyst and Topaz. I would have finished it this week as well, but one of the square beads was chipped. I emailed Artbeads and they are sending along a replacement, with their profuse apologies.
While I was perusing their website I also picked up a couple of kits.
This is the
Cape Cod in Bloom Bracelet.
And this is the
Tanzanite Temptation Bracelet.
These kits included everything you needed except the beading wire for stringing, which I have. They called out a different brand in the instructions, but I always use Soft Flex. Both of the kit bracelets were strung on the Soft Flex Extreme Metallic Flex Wire Medium (0.019 in diameter), in the 925 Sterling Silver.
Lovely design, but...it is a bit long and will slip off of my hand with very little encouragement, and those focal beads add a fair bit of weight. I wore it to work one day, and while it never came off, it was worrisome. So, I decided to get a second kit and make a necklace. I was going to try to do matching earrings, but when I did that the necklace came out just a little too short.
Project - Cape Cod in Bloom.
