Bracelet

I was plumb out of inspiration today.

I know, right? Just three days into November, and I'm already hurting for ideas?

Well, not to give excuses, but I had a really busy day at work today (which means no time to daydream about projects), hardly any sleep the night before (which means my brain was already addled more than usual), and I do believe I'm coming down with a cold (which, of course, means all I want to do is crawl into bed). So yeah. Creativity? Not so much.

So, after sitting and looking at all my craft supplies for over an hour with no ideas springing from my head, I went rummaging through some of my jewelry books.

I have a very limited supply of wire at the moment as I've been hesitant to buy more (what with silver prices going through the roof), so if I was going to do a wire jewelry project tonight, it needed to be a small one.

In Contemporary Bead & Wire Jewelry, I found a bangle bracelet that I figured would be not too difficult and something I could wear.

My supplies:

metal block
jewelers hammer
round nose pliers
10-11 small beads of your choosing
I used 2 gauges of wire - one thin enough to slide small beads onto (I'm guessing about a 22) and one thick enough to hold it's shape with minimal work hardening (about an 18?).

**Let me use this as an opportunity to tell you how important it is to mark your baggies with your various gauges of wire in it. I ended up holding up my SIX bags of wire and comparing them to figure out which one was which. I do not recommend it.**

The project actually called for 3 gauges of wire (the thickest for the frame, the thinnest for the beads, and the middle to wrap around the entire bracelet again to finish it off), but I didn't have enough of the middle length to make it all the way around, so I stopped at 2. It would probably look a bit more polished with 3, but eh.

I apologize for the blurriness of the photos. I could not get them to come in focus in the dark rooms of my apartment.

The front:


The back:

And now, I'm off to bed.

Good night!