Basic Jewelrymaking

*Basic* Beaded Bracelet

Hi everyone. This is Vicki Busseno. I am going to bring you Basic Beaded Jewelry Design.

These are some of the pieces that I bought at Michael’s. Ah, not all of these items I bought at Michael’s, but these are the basic supplies that we’ll be using today.

These little silver things right here, those are called crimp beads and you just squash them together at the end to your bracelet or your necklace. In this case, it’s a bracelet.

This little piece right here is called a soldered ring. This is gonna be the end that your lobster clasp goes through. And these right here are what I’m talking about when I say lobster clasps.

This is the wire we’re going to be using. It’s called Accu-Flex. Ah, it is a little bit more expensive. The stuff that you’re going to wanna use when you first start is called Tiger Tail. It is a lot less expensive and you’re going to go through a lot of it.

These are your beads and they are temporarily strung on what’s called a hank. A hank is the cheap plastic cord that they put the beads on. In this case, you can see that it’s actually two strands.

So here I’ve taken all of the beads off of the hanks and they’re just individual beads right now.

These particular beads are called hematite and hematite is iron oxide. It’s called hematite ‘cause hema means blood and when it comes out of the earth, like all iron, it’s this rusty red color. It’s only when they polish it that you get this beautiful silver-black color.

These little beads right here that I’m just pushing around, the little rounds, are silverplated rounds. When you start that’s what you’re going to want to use. If you continue it, as you get better, you’re probably going to want to use real semi-precious stones, like the hematite – and sterling silver.

These beads right here are called Austrian Crystal. If you watch Dancing with the Stars, a lot of the times, the gowns have Swarovski crystals hanging on them – that’s what these beads are – only they’re a much smaller version.

So let’s get started!

Okay, so here I’ve laid out my pattern. Ah, on the bead board, it gives you dimensions. So we can see that this pattern is approximately 8 inches, if I move my fingers out of the way. There we go. I am a heavier girl so I need an 8 inch bracelet. Most women are a 7 ½; smaller women can be 7 to 6 ½ inches. Now I’m just going to run the string through it and we’ll see the final result.

Okay, this is to show you what it’s going to look like before we crimp it. See if I can’t get that close to the camera. I just strung the lobster clasp with a crimp bead right here and the cord is kinda running through it and now we’re just gonna crimp it.

Okay, so now it’s all crimped – it’s kinda squashed looking.

So here’s our finished bracelet – all done – looks gorgeous! You can wear that with green or blue or black. It’s kind of an all-purpose bracelet. So I’m just going to put it on so I can model it for you. There it is. There’s our clasp. All done! And that was….really very simple.

That concludes my podcast. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed showing you. Ah….thank you very much. Have a good day.