A Bracelet a Week: One

I’m at it again! When I said that I might do a bracelet challenge after A Necklace a Day, I was mostly kidding. Once the last challenge was finished, I took a much needed break, and spent some time getting things organized, working on my shop, and writing more.

Just like taking a long vacation from a job, I almost didn’t want to go back to beading. I needed something to motivate me, and get that spark going again. I finally decided it was time to work on finishing the beaded rope I started for the tubular herringbone tutorial. When finished, it will be a fun variation of my Cornucopia Lariat, along with a new PDF tutorial.

Did I really want to spend the next three weeks working on a plain brown rope? Nope!

I considered working on the rope one packet of beads at a time, and making other things in between each addition. Then I thought “What if I make one small project at the beginning of each week, and work on the rope the rest of the time?”

What a great idea! And if I’m going to make it worth while, I might as well blog about it. Doing a bracelet a week seemed like an obvious choice, since I haven’t done them yet, and I need the challenge. The thing is, I don’t really like making bracelets, because I never have any ideas for them. And I never have ideas, because I don’t really like making bracelets. Hopefully, a little pressure will help things along.

So, can I make one bracelet a week for 52 weeks? I’m going to say probably. Most likely. Hopefully! If I get to thirty and can’t stand the sight of beads anymore, I reserve the right to call the whole thing off. I know I can do thirty. One project a week is easy compared to one a day!

So, the very first project of A Bracelet a Week is this totally weird and fantastic cuff. When I took inventory of my 6/o seed bead tray, I realized that I’ve had these neon lime seed beads for over a year, and never even opened a single package. Not once have I looked at them and thought “Those would be great for…”. So I decided to try and use them all up at once and be done with it.

The biggest reason that I’ve never used them is because nothing goes with neon except stark neutrals and other neons. And although I have hot pink and fluorescent orange beads, too, I had no desire to combine them whatsoever. Also, if I wanted to be sure to use up all or most of the 24 grams I had, I needed to do something simple and bold.

I envisioned all kinds of things from ropes to cuffs, mostly with stripes and swirl patterns. And then I had an idea of boxes and blocks, and that turned into an image of windows. I just happen to have a whole lot of copper lined gray 6/o seed beads that look just like tinted window glass. Perfect!

So that’s one down, and only 51 more to go. Wish me luck!

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