This weekend I spent more time on my Christmas crafting. The advantage of having no one on my Christmas crafting list read the blog, is that I can blog about the things I make, unlike a lot other blogger who are working their way through many secret projects. I’ve mentioned before that for the girls on my list, I make up stocking type boxes of gifts. I’ve already made them candle holders, got started on the knit bunnies and I’ve taken a trip to Lush and stocked up on a variety of bath bombs and bubbles. I have a pile of craft supplies, ready to turn into gifts and a little more shopping to do. One thing I always like to put in is jewellery. Last year I made them all earings (and made myself several pairs too). This year, I’ve gone for bracelets.

I got the idea for these in the summer after I saw something similar in Primark. The ones in Primark just had one charm, a looser plait, and I couldn’t remember how the ends were closed. The bracelets gave me a couple of problems when I was starting out. For a start, my hands and wrists are small, which makes it hard for me to work out how big to make things for other people. Second I couldn’t work out how to nicely close the ends and have a loop on the end to make it all secure. But I got to work and ordered the bits and pieces I needed anyway. I wanted to use suede leather strips for the bracelets and I found some faux leather ones in a large range of colours. The charms I got are Tibetan silver, and there are a huge range of charms to choose from. I got three the same for everyone, and then got the fourth different to change things up. I also got some glass stars beads in different colours.

All of these arrived sometime in November, and then sat around for a while, waiting for inspiration to hit, on the matter of closing the ends neatly. I tried super gluing them together, and then wrapping wire around it to hide the ends. It sort of worked, but I couldn’t get the thicker wire to wrap nicely, and the thinner wire I had didn’t look as good. Eventually I came up with a different idea. This time, I super glued the ends together with the wire loop and some embroidery thread between them. I safety pinned the end to a chair so that it was secure. I wrapped the thread around the superglued ends to hide it and the wire, and then started plaiting, making sure the thread was plaited too and hidden from sight from the front. I had already put all my charms on to jump rings, and used a head pin to secure the glass star beads. Then I just added the charms randomly as I plaited making sure they were all on the same side. Once I got to the other end, I superglued the ends together again, with the thread and another wire loop. I found it was easiest to glue two of the ends with the thread between them, then trim the lengths of leather to that point, and glue the wire and last end together with the rest. I left a long end on the thread and cut it off too, then threaded it onto a needle. I wrapped around the superglued ends again then used the needle to push the thread through the plait and secure it, before hiding it under the wrapped bit and trimming it off. Then I added an adjustable closure to the bracelet, and it was all done! The blue one on the end is for me, because I couldn’t spend so long making things for everyone else, without wanting one for myself!