Scrap Box Sunday: Elastic Cuff Bracelet

Happy Easter beautiful people! First of all, let me apologise for being AWOL from the blogging scene lately - as I predicted, being on holidays meant I actually had less spare time ;) but don't fret, Uni goes back after this long weekend so everything should be back to normal soon!

Now onto the crafting! Today we're using up fabric scraps (again! I have a lot of fabric leftovers...) and making a cuff bracelet!

What You Need:

* A rectangle of fabric

The longer it is, the more ruffled the cuff will be.

The wider it is, the wider your cuff.

* Two strips of elastic

* Embellishments

I used more fabric and felt scraps and some beads.

What To Do:

Fold both long edges of your fabric rectangle inward and pin them in place. You want to fold them over enough so that when sewn up, your elastic will fit inside.

Sew up both edges. If you want the finished product to be tidier and more robust, you could fold that raw edge under as well, but it'll be on the inside of the cuff and since I'm just making this one for me, I did it the lazy way (as usual!)

Cut two strips of elastic. These should be long enough to comfortably fit around your wrist, plus about 1 cm for sewing up the edges.

Grab a safety pin and pop it through one end of one piece of your elastic. Use the safety pin to thread your elastic down the sewn "tube" edge of your fabric rectangle.

Push your elastic all the way into the tube, so that the end lines up with the edge of the "tube".

Sew across the end of the elastic, back and forwards a couple of times, to hold it securely in place.

Now use the safety pin to pull the elastic all the way through and out the other side of the "tube", ruffling your fabric as you go.

Line up the end of the elastic with the open end of the tube and pin it in place. Remove the safety pin and sew across the end of the elastic, back and forth a couple of times, to hold it in place.

Repeat with the other piece of elastic on the other side of your fabric! You should end up with a stretchy, ruffled thing that looks kind of like a piece from a baby's nappy cover XD

Fold this in half, raw edges facing the outside, and line up the ends. Pin the two ends together.

Sew straight across the top edge, remove the pins.

Turn it right side out and now you have a very simple, ruffled fabric cuff!

Time to embellish it..!

You can of course embellish yours any way you like. This is what I did.

First, cut some petal shapes from three different coordinating fabrics. You probably want about 6 petals from each fabric. Also [not pictured!] cut out three circles of white felt.

Grab out that trusty glue gun! Pop a little dab of glue on the end of your petal shape and press it together. Now you have a nice 3D petal instead of a 2D one ;) Do this to all of your petal shapes.

Glue your petals directly onto your cuff, arranged into three flowers (sorry, forgot to take a photo!) Pop a dob of glue in the centre back of your felt circles and glue these to the centres of your flowers.

 This next step was tricky to take a photo of because you need both hands (thus, no camera hand free!) and you need to do it quickly! Before the glue dries. It'll take longer to read about than to actually do ;)

Pop a big dob of glue in the centre of your felt. Pinch the opposite edges of your felt circle together (I'm doing one in the pic below, but you want to do both at the same time to get the right effect!) and when it's starting to hold, but the glue is still drying, take a generous pinch of pretty coloured seed beads and sprinkle them in the centre. Push them into the glue. 

Resume pinching the edges until it's all nicely dried, then shake off the loose beads. 

I lost a tonne of beads in our carpet, yay! >_<

Do this for all three of your flowers and you're done! I think smaller flowers would look even better.

Here's an action shot, please excuse my thin yet manly wrist :P Let the pretty cuff distract you instead!

Happy Easter! Have a safe and love filled weekend!

Guest Post Repeat - Button Bracelet Tutorial

I was super excited last Tuesday to be guest posting (my first time ever!) at My World - Made By Hand! Just in case you missed it, here's the tutorial I shared!

First, gather your materials!

You will need:

• Assorted buttons in coordinating colours (one or two colours works well)
• A length of tiger-tail wire or other thread, approximately double the length of your wrist width
• Coordinating ribbon (not pictured - sorry! I used plain black ribbon)
• 2 Crimps
• Sticky Tape
• Scissors
• Pliers
• Candle and lighter (also not pictured)

What to do:

Thread your first button on. A nice big one is a good choice!

Turn it over and tape it to the tiger-tail. This is just temporary and makes sure it doesn't slip off the tiger-tail while you add the rest of your buttons.

Thread on your second button.

Pull the thread firmly. Notice how we threaded the cord through the rightmost hole of the green button and the leftmost hole of the pink one? We'll keep doing this, because that's how we get them to overlap but not be right on top of each other! 

Thread the tiger-tail through the other hole in the pink button, then in the left hole of a new button. Thread the tiger-tail behind the new button and back to the front through the other hole. 

Continue threading your buttons in this way until you have a long enough bracelet to fit around your wrist!

You'll notice that you have a top layer and a bottom layer of buttons!

OK, now we're going to turn our strip of buttons into a bracelet.

Slide a crimp onto the end of your tiger-tail then loop the end around and push it through the crimp as well. If you want to attach a chain, thread a jump ring on before you push the end through the crimp (pictured below). We're going to finish the bracelet using ribbon, so leave the jump ring off.

Make the loop as close to the back of the last button as you can (pictured below) then use your pliers to press the crimp tight. Make another loop at the other end of your button strip.

We're going to use ribbon to tie off the bracelet, so cut two lengths of your ribbon. Use a candle to melt the ends of your ribbon pieces to stop them from fraying.

Tie your ribbons to the loops at each end of your button strip.

Tie the ribbons together in a pretty bow and you're done!

Thanks for having me as a guest poster Jessica! I had a lot of fun!

Guest Posting Today at My World Made By Hand!

Today is very exciting because it's my very first time guest posting!

I'm visiting over at My World - Made By Hand and sharing how to make a cute button bracelet!

Go and check it out! :D

Craft Book Challenge - Finally Did Something!!

I know, I know, it's March - this should be project number three not project number ONE! I'll try to catch up later, I promise!

So, here's the craft book I used for my first Craft Book Challenge project!

See me sneakily wearing the project in this photo?

And here's the project! I did some loom beading then turned it into a simple bracelet!

What do you think? Not too shabby for a first try, right?

I only have a little wrist, so it's only a little bracelet! 

One project down, 11 to go!!

Fabric and Wooden Bead Bracelet Tutorial

Here's a little bracelet I was playing around with the other day in an attempt to use up some scrap material ;) It turned out OK!

What you need:

• Scrap fabric
• Wooden beads
• Embroidery thread and needle
• Clasp
• Short length of chain
• Two jump rings

What to do:

First of all, sew a tube of fabric that is wide enough to slide your biggest bead through and long enough to go around your wrist. Check out Fabric and Bead Necklace Tutorial for how to do that bit.

Next, attach your clasp to a jump ring, and tie the jump ring onto the end of your embroidery thread.

Thread wooden beads onto your embroidery thread so that you have enough for the length of your fabric tube, leaving a largish gap between each bead. This actually ended up being too many beads - leave a bigger gap.

Add a bit of sticky tape to the other end of the embroidery thread so your beads don't slide off while you're doing the rest of the steps.

Slide the fabric tube over your beaded thread.

Using a running stitch to stitch embroidery thread around the end of the fabric tube. If you want the ends of the bracelet to look neater, fold the edge of the fabric tube inwards first. I don't mind the look of the raw fabric edge :) Of course, this won't last as long either.

Make sure the clasp is outside of the fabric tube and all the beads are inside, then pull the running stitch tight. Tie a knot to secure the end. A couple of knots if you want ;)

Push the first bead up to the clasp end of the tube as firmly to the end as you can. 

Now you have two options:

* Option One *

Don't snip the thread. Push the needle back into the fabric tube just below where you tied it off and push it back out just past the first bead.Wrap the thread around the outside of the fabric and knot it off. Repeat this for each bead in your bracelet.

* Option Two *

Snip the thread. Tie a knot just after the first bead. Knot it into place. Snip the thread and repeat for each bead in your bracelet.

Option two is pretty easy and fast, but you see the raw edges of the trimmed off knots. Option one is a neater finish. I kind of like the look of option two for this one, especially with the raw edges of the fabric showing.

To finish the bracelet, attach the short length of chain to the jump ring and tie the jump ring to the end of the beaded embroidery thread. 

Now repeat an earlier step - stitch a running stitch around the edge of the fabric tube, pull it tight and knot it off. Make sure the jump ring is outside of the fabric tube :) Trim all the loose threads and, if you want, attach a charm to the end of the extension chain.

Ta da!

Tutorial - Family Tree Bracelet

I've made family tree bracelets for both my Grandma and my Nan as Christmas presents now, so I thought I'd share with you how I go about making them. This is the one I made for my Grandma a while ago.

This is the one I made this year for my Nan, which I'll talk you through. She's rather fond of purple :)

Materials:

• Photo frame charms. 6-10, Tibetan silver.
• Photos. One for each frame. 
• Assorted of other charms. 
• Assorted small coordinating beads. 
• Head pins. For attaching coordinating beads.
• Chain. Enough for two strands around the wrist plus a little extra for an extension chain.
• Jump rings. Enough to attach everything.
• Lobster clasp and ring. One :)
• Glue. I used my trusty gemstone glue yet again. Is there anything that stuff can't do?!

What to do:
Turn your chain into a basic bracelet
I like using two strands of chain, it just gives it a bit more texture. In my first bracelet I used two different types of chain - thick copper coloured and dainty gold coloured, in this one I used two strands of the same silver chain. Try to pick something aesthetically pleasing because it isn't completely hidden.

Undo a loop at one end of your length of chain and attach it a few centimetres from the other end of the chain, so you end up with a double stranded bracelet with a little extension chain. Attach your lobster clasp to the end of your bracelet that doesn't have the extension chain, and the loop to the base of the extension chain. I also like to attach a little Swarovski crystal or other bead to the end of the extension chain. You should end up with something like this:

To make the Swarovski crystal dangle, I used a soft silver head pin, made a loop and wrapped the excess around the top of the crystal. I forgot to take a photo, sorry :(

Print your photos in the right size
I used 6 frames for the first bracelet and 10 on the second. I wouldn't really use more than 10 myself, but it's totally up to you.When you've decided how many frames to use, you need to actually find some photos ;) I can't really help you here! But I like to make sure I have at least one photo of each immediate family member, sometimes pets too if the person is an animal lover. You could also include pictures of things the person you're making it for likes, like favourite flowers or foods or something.

It's a bit of trial and error working out what photos will look nice and printing them to fit. My biggest bit of advice here is to print them using your printer's draft setting (this uses less ink and is faster) onto scrap or plain paper before printing them onto photo quality matte or glossy paper. I usually put all the mini photos into one large image file so I can print them all at once, and I usually have two or three sizes going at a time when I'm trial printing. I would advise cutting the pictures out and making doubly sure they fit before using photo paper, not just eye balling them.

Also, I like using single tone photos for these. It's up to you what you do, but have a play around with the colour settings in your graphics program and see what you come up with. For the first bracelet I started with sepia tone and modified it to be a bit more coppery, for this one I started with black and white and modified it to be purpley :)

When you're happy, print them on photo paper (glossy, yum!), cut them out and glue them into the frames. I like these Tibetan silver frames, but gold, copper, base metal or any other charms would of course work just as well. Let these dry fully before doing anything else with them.

Attach photo frames to the bracelet
Use jump rings to attach the frames, evenly spaced, to one strand of the bracelet. Should look much like this:

Attach charms and beads to the bracelet

I liked to use charms that reflect the person I'm making the bracelet for, but you could just pick ones that look pretty or fit the theme of your bracelet. For this bracelet I used an assortment of real and glass pearls, glass beads and metal charm in silver, white and purple tones. For this, I placed one purple and one white smallish bead onto a head pin, sometimes with a small silver spacer at the bottom or between the beads. I made a few of these using different bead combinations, but trying to balance the overall colours and look.

Before finishing the head pins, I like to lay out all of the charms and beads and see if I like the balance of the overall piece.

Nommy!

When you're happy with the look, finish your head pin pieces by bending in a loop just above the top bead and cutting off any excess wire. I use round nose pliers for the loop bending, there's lots of tutorials online about how to do this so for now I won't go into detail.

Attach all of your charms and beaded pieces to the still-empty strand of the bracelet. I try to place them so that they fall roughly between the frames.

Viola! You're done. Congratulations :)

Update: I'm now offering to make custom bracelets just like these in my MadeIt store!