Saturday, March 14, 2009

Fun with Bracelet Blanks

Saturdays with no formal committment are wonderful for drifting from one fun project to another. Throw in a craft store or two and it's a little bit of heaven!

I've been tossing around ideas for using these bracelet blanks from Rings&Things this week. In fact, I took a couple of them to work and asked some non-beading coworkers for their thoughts.

Most people seemed to go the conservative route and suggested gluing flat back beads to the disks. A couple suggested using it as a charm bracelet. I did have a conversation with one crafter about decoupaging flat round wooden craft disks. We also talked about using decorative paper punches and decoupaging the cut-outs.

I thought about using the tiny black jump rings I featured recently in some way to hang some dangles from the links, but didn't like the look of that. It then occurred to me to add the outer strands using this simple chainmaille design and as it took shape, I really liked it.

I was able to find the black flat-back disks in the scrapbooking section of the craft store to glue on the disks. I must say I like the look of this finished product. Let me know what you think and if you have any other cool ideas!

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!!

9 comments:

ohdawno said...

Great design! I'm still staring at mine and trying to figure out what to do.

Anonymous said...

Ooooohh! I like it, a lot!

Are you going to Artiscape in April?

Ikow Designs said...

Love it!!! Are the discs glued to both sides or just one?

Lisa Crone said...

Hi there! In response to the question from Ikow Designs,the discs are glued to the front side only. There is just one flat, glueable surface on this bracelet. Because of that design and the bar clasp, it seems to stay in place on the correct side.

Thanks for the question! The possibilities are pretty endless.

Dave Robertson said...

- Really cool, Lisa! Instead of focusing on embellishing the "pad" parts, you've amplified the qualities of the metal in the bracelet blank by multi-stranding... And with nice results. Great idea :)

--Dave

AFlyOnTheWall said...

You could solder a silver and/or brass disc (decreasing in size) to it giving it a multi color metal look.

OR - you could use some fun stamps to stamp the flat surface!

OR - hammer flat surface to texture it!

OR - if you are glueing use a great series of tiny photos with one of those glass half marbles over it - or a dome lense? this would be fun with a wildflower, fern, animal, or bug series!

Robyn Hawk
http://gemshows.blogspot.com

Carole said...

Those are cool link pieces!

I got a few strands at Michael's over the weekend,
but nothing that neat looking!

Anonymous said...

I love how it turned out. Interesting that you found those in the scrapbooking section. I'm always over there these days when I go to Michael's. They have the coolest embellishments.

Anonymous said...

I have used those before exept they were round discs and I used polymer clay canes that size which added color. People liked that effect.