Elastic bracelet with hand painted blue ceramic beads

How to make a bracelet with 10 mm beads?

Elastic bracelets are one of the simplest techniques in jewelry making. It is an intergenerational activity, accessible to children from 8 years old to adults of all ages. By simply changing the beads, you can create an infinite number of bracelets in totally different styles. There are a few tips to know when getting into elastic bracelets:

• Don't put on hand cream before creating your bracelet. The wire may slip off.
• Pre-stretch your wire before stringing the beads. Elastic wires will stretch after a while. Pre-stretching the wire prevents this from happening after the bracelet is finished.
• Always use wire that is easy to thread through the beads, but large enough to withstand the weight of the beads. Otherwise, double it.
• There are two ways to close an elastic bracelet. The best is to use the surgeon's knot which is very strong, but may not work with all elastic wires, especially when they are thick. The other method is to use a crush bead, but it can weaken the wire and reduce its life.
• To hide the knot, you can put a knot cover bead over it or plan to slip the knot inside the bead with the largest hole by adding glue to the front knot.
• Once the bracelet is finished, do not store it in direct sunlight, high heat, salt, solvents or chemicals as this will damage the thread.

For this bracelet that smells like summer, we chose to use ceramic beads painted with blue floral patterns. We used four 8mm beads and two 10mm beads. The 10mm beads are sold in bags of 4. Here we only used one of each 10mm bead, but if you only want to make one bracelet, you can choose between the beads with the flowers or the striped ones to make your bracelet.

Remember to check out the sliding scale prices of the components of this bracelet if you want to make more than one.