Mother's day rolled paper bracelet

I carried on with my rolled paper beads theme to make this bracelet for a mother's day present: 

I made straight beads rather than the usual sort of tapered oval/bicone ones, by rolling rectangles of paper instead of triangles. It's slightly fiddlier in that you have to get the paper exactly straight to start with, with no room for error, and also the pattern will show on the outside of the roll much more obviously so you have to bear that in mind when choosing paper. I used an advert for a Honda car, which has lots of shades of purple in it. I alternated which end of the paper came out on top for a variety of bead colours.

Then I decided to do something a little bit different from just stringing them together, and did this sort of ladder design. The beads are side-by-side, rather than end-to-end. It's quite simple to do, but mine was massively complicated by the fact that I didn't have any proper bead-stringing thread and had to use embroidery thread. I wanted to use a cotton cord, but all the ones I've got were too thick to go through the beads twice (as it has to for this design) and far too thick to go through the fastener, and we don't have any bead shops to get more from in Newcastle. None at all. Not one. So, embroidery thread it was, the benefit of which is that it comes in every shade in the world so you can pick the right one. Combined with some nice purple beads for the ends, I was happy with the colours.

To make the bracelet, you have to start from the middle of the thread so that you have two ends (on needles is easiest, though dangerous). Each time you add a paper bead, you need to thread each end first through a seed bead, then each end goes through the paper bead, from opposite ends of the bead so that the threads cross over inside the bead. Once you get into it it's quite a quick process (though using embroidery thread means it keeps on getting knotted and splitting - don't use this).

Handmade jump rings

I've been enjoying the chain maille, which takes a lot of jump rings. So when I saw this jump ring maker, I thought I'd splash out. It came today (from The Bead Shop Nottingham, £9.95) and it's great! I got some silver-plated wire in two thicknesses, and some turquoise wire to play with as well.

You choose one of the widths of mandrel and screw it into the base like this:

Then you put the wire through the little hole to hold it in place and wind the wire round the mandrel as many times as you want jump rings. You cut the wire and take the resulting spiral off the mandrel and you get something like this:
Then you just cut through the spiral with wire cutters and your perfect little jump rings are complete. Like these:
I made these ones with 1mm wire on the 4mm mandrel. I got 0.6mm wire too, which is fine for 4mm jump rings for attaching clasps and headpins and so on, but is a bit thin for much bigger. It's really easy to use, mine came out perfect the first time I tried it, and wire is cheap so I think it's definitely worth just making my own from now on instead of buying them.

Black

I've been into black jewellery lately, and chunky bracelets, so I combined the two to make this. The big faceted bead is from an old bracelet I took apart because I didn't wear it. I used all the other beads from that bracelet to make another one of just those, but for some reason I haven't put a picture up yet. I will. The other beads on this one are lava alternating with some nice flat glass ones from Beads Direct. It's strung on Elasticity.

And this is lava beads again (also from Beads Direct) with some metal spacers from Beads Unlimited. I got them in a kit I was sent when I took out a subscription to Make Jewellery magazine, on which more later. They're just threaded onto a headpin and strung on suede.

Solid links

This one was made with these nice oval rings. They've been sitting about on my desk for ages because I couldn't find anything good to do with them but then I made this. As they're just a solid ring, they have to be linked with jump rings, and the in-between links are from Yum Yums again - they're wire wrapped beads, mostly black but with the odd dark blue one mixed in.

This necklace is similar, but the rings are twisty. Instead of jump rings to link them, I made links with eye pins - just put a few beads on and turn the non-bent end the same as the other end. You could do it with plain wire, of course, but using eye pins means half the work's done for you. The clear cubey beads were from eBay, they were a measly 99p for 100 with free delivery! They came from Hong Kong as well, so I can't imagine postage was that cheap.

Big bead bracelets

I've gone bracelet mad! I've been making millions of them, I can't get enough. These are all made with Elasticity. The beads for the ones in the top two photos are from the wonderful Yum Yum beads in Leeds, where I went a bit mad buying loads of stuff when I went the other day. They know how to run a bead shop - they have all their beads in little trays, and little tubs for you to gather them up in yourself. Le Beado could learn a lot from them. Which is where the beads in the bottom photo came from, actually - much more expensive than Yum Yum's, at 55p each (the ones in the top picture were 40p each on a multibuy deal).

And I made two more of the bumpy bead bracelets with the rest of the beads, so I got three bracelets out of that £4.50 pack, and a few left over. Not bad.