Vernal cuffs

This year the "small-things" season started early, with - surprise - bracelets.
I mixed three types of cords. Polyamide (Nylon) satin multifilament has vivid colours and a soft finish. Twisted cotton carries a plain, natural look. Hemp twine gives strength and helps secure knotting.
Four strands are braided into a "Portuguese" sinnet - a simple knotting pattern that results in a flat closely-wooven ribbon-like braid.
To finish the braiding, I turn the end of one or two of the cords in and weave them on the underside (inner face) of the sinnet. The remaining cords are brought over to the starting end of the sinnet and then threaded trought the underside weave too. Before tying their free ends together, I give them some extra length to make the loop adjustable, so the braceletcan slip on and off the hand.
The knotting pattern creates, on the edges of the braid, a series of nested loops that can hold additional ornaments. In the two bracelets shown here, I strung glass (red, black and blue) and metal beads.

Purple drops

A couple of years ago, on a short trip to Brussels, I stumbled upon a small shop selling a collection of hand-made artefacts from central Africa - mostly ornaments and simple every-day apparel. I found most of them really beautiful - and bought a fan-out necklace made of copper for my daughter Kynthia (who seemed to enjoy it a lot : )
The idea to copy the design of that necklace into a low-cost "jewel” of my own making has been haunting me, since. Time has ripened and, voilà, a first attempt, drafted on the violet/purple key.
The rods are made of tinned copper wire: forty-seven (I think) in total, ranging linearly in length from 20 to 90 mm. Each rod carries a small glass bead and a larger one of tin-plated brass.
The latter is soldered on the rod with a tiny drop of the common tin-lead alloy used in electronics – and serves as a stopper. The upper end of each rod is turned into a loop (or eye) and stringed on a waxed polyester thread. Overhang knots are tied between adjacent rod eyes, to keep them regularly spaced apart.

Estival bracelets: res parvae

As always, some merit lies in the small things. In the case of 2011 summer bracelets, i found out that the grommets on the ready-made barrel clasps tend to deform and let one or more strands go loose. For a more solid solution, one can make full-loop grommets using brass (or similar alloy) wire.
The end of the wire that goes inside the barrel can be secured by tying it in a knot or, simply, bending a small number of folds. This way, the grommet can turn freely inside the barrel clasp (which facilitates fastening the bracelet on the wrist).
The other end of the wire is shaped into a (single or double) loop, some five or six mm in diameter. At the closure of the loop, the wire is wound once or twice around the "stem" which exits the barrel.
By the way, i am only glad to report that the bracelets have been a success - demand keeps rising!

Estival bracelets

Summer is a great season for small projects. I use to come up with a craft theme every year. This time round, it's simple, colourful jewels - ladies' bracelets, to be exact.
I start with a length of waxed polyester thread. It comes in many colours, is relatively inexpensive, very strong, resistant to wear and easy to work with. Polyester melts under heat, so the end of the thread can be conveniently shaped (e.g. flat to slide in a needle's eye or in a thin rod to string a bead). I have been using waxed polyester for leather stitching (handsewing) for years and it never let me down.
Craft shops hold threaded barrel clasps for bracelets, necklaces etc. When properly screwed-in, they are quite reliable. Made from brass alloy, they usually come in silver and gold colour. Typically, on their "outside" extremities they present wire loops (or "grommets") to attach a thread or wire.
The rest is just beads - spaced at will and according to taste. In this case, i used coloured oyster shell fragements, short pieces of 1/16" brass tubing (for the two bottom examples in the photo) and glass and silver beads (for the green bracelet on top). A simple overhand knot on each side of a bead fastens it in place.
Each bracelet has seven or nine thread runs (each approx. 16 cm long, for a typical female wrist), i.e. three- or four- and-a-half loops of thread around the clasps' grommets. An odd number of strands means that threading finishes on opposite ends of the bracelet. The rest of the thread is then used to tie the loops together (e.g. with a couple of half-hitches around the bunch).