Scrap Box Sunday: Lace Cuff Bracelet

First of all beautiful people, let me apologise for being so late to post today! My lovely man started his new job this week and so we've been getting into a new routine and crafting and blogging has taken a back seat until we get entirely settled.

Still, I do have a project to share with you today! Another Anthropologie inspired one, as I'm afraid I'm too tired to be creative enough to come up with something fully original!! Here's the inspiration, Anthro's $228 (!!!) Lavish Lace Bracelet:

(c) Anthropologie

And here's my "lazy" lace cuff bracelet tutorial, which turned out to be a bit Alice in Wonderland inspired too! Mostly because the lacy fabric I had on hand was a pretty pale blue ;)

What you need:

* Scrap lace fabric

* Jewellery wire

* Hot glue gun

* Optional - other embellishments, I used ribbon and buttons

I didn't end up using the white fabric or embellishments, maybe next time!

What to do:

Cut two long strips of wire. These need to be long enough to make a circle that can slip over the widest part of your hand, so work out how big the widest part of your hand is and then make it another inch or so longer.

Cut three to five short strips of wire. The length of these dictates how long your cuff will be. I'm lazy so I did three strips, but I think you'd get a better outcome with 5 (Anthro used four and their bracelet is a bit boxy). Next time I make one I would try 5.

Take your short wire strips and make a loop at both ends of all of them. For extra durability, I looped it a bit more than I would if I were making a headpin, like this:

 

Slide your long wire piece through the loops at one end of all of your short wire pieces, then twist the ends of the long wire pieces together to make a circle. 

Repeat with the other end of your short wires and your other long wire. It should now look like this (sorry for the completely awful photo):

Adjust the short wires so they're roughly evenly spaced around the circles, and use your hot glue gun to keep them in place. 

Cut a long strip of fabric long enough to wrap around the entire wire frame, allowing about 1 cm extra height so you can fold the top and bottom edges over. Also cut a thin strip of fabric for each short strip of wire you used. 

I ended up cutting the three little strips shown here in half again because they were too wide.

Run hot glue down the inside of your short wire and attach your little fabric strip so that the "open end" faces outwards. The open end will be covered when we wrap the whole frame in fabric. 

Repeat so all of your short wires are covered with fabric.

Run a strip of hot glue down the outside of one of your short strips of wire and attach your long piece of lace fabric. You want to keep the fabric taut through all of this to ensure a nice finish.

When the first short wire strip is attached, run glue down the next fabric strip and roll your bracelet to attach it to the fabric, pulling the fabric taut (but not so tight than the glue unsticks!) Like so:

Repeat for all of your short wire strips, and again for the first wire strip so that the entire bracelet is covered. You should have something like this:

Trim off the end of your long fabric strip, then run glue around the inside of the top and bottom of your bracelet and fold the excess fabric inside the cuff, so that both ends look like this:

Trim off any excess fabric of hot glue gun "spiderwebs" and you should have something vaguely resembling Anthro's $228 bracelet:

You can stop there if you want. I couldn't, I felt the need to embellish:

I just ran some frilly lace around one edge, some plain ribbon around the other, and hot glued a few buttons down the middle. Now it feels like Alice in Wonderland costume jewellery! Perhaps I need to make another one so I have a pair ;) I think this would look pretty cool tucked under a white long-sleeved shirt.

I plan to make another plain one using white embroidered fabric so I will share how that turns out when I get around to it! Hope everyone had a lovely weekend! <3