Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Simple Beaded Bracelet in Water Hues with Charm

We'll be making these simple beaded bracelets for our first MOPS craft this year. Our theme is PLUNGE! (as in, take the plunge, dive in head first...). 
I'm sharing it here because it would also make a great Girl Scouts craft or Girls Night Out craft, and it can be easily adapted for different themes or colors.

Since PLUNGE is a water theme, I was inspired to use water hues and picked mostly beads that are transparent.  I even found some that were shaped like little shells.  I added some metal beads for more variety and finished it off with a charm.  I bought starfish charms, but I also got some inspirational word charms (love, faith, friend, grace, etc.) in case some people dislike the look the of the starfish.  I purchased all of the beads at orientaltrading.com and the Stretch Magic bead cord at our local Michaels craft store (about $2.49 for 5 meters of .7mm).


Supply List
(Enough to make 48 bracelets)

2 pkg Nugget Word Charms--$7.25 each
2 pkg 7mm Silver Tone Dotted Barrels--$4.25 each
3 pkg Winter Colors Bead Assortment--$7.99 each
1 pkg Metal spacer bead assortment--$16.00
4 pkg 8mm Clear Cut Glass Crystal beads--$5.50 ea
4 pkg 12mm Blue/Aqua Shell Glass beads--$6.25 ea
1 pkg Silver tone Metal Starfish Charms--$6.25 ea
-------------
$116.22

Plus 4 packages of the Stretch Magic cord @ $9.56
I used the .7mm cord because the 1mm cord is too thick to go through some of the beads and the .5mm cord is so thin that it sometimes breaks when tying it off.

Total was $125.78 divided by 48 finished bracelets comes out to about $2.62 per bracelet.


To make bead kits:
I pre-package little kits to make it easier, although it's a bit time-consuming.  You could just put the beads into separate bowls with a note next to each one of how many to take.  Then let the women go through the line with a bag or dixie cup and get their own.  However, I've noticed that some people will take more of one kind of bead and none of a color they don't like.  Then you run out of those colors and the last few people through the line end up with leftovers.

Put into each bag:
  • Grab 48 snack size baggies.
  • Sort all of the metal beads by type.  Select 4 different styles of the metal beads and put 2 of each style in the bag for a total of 8 metal beads.  I tried to mix it up (4 barrel, 4 round kind).  If you put all barrel style in the same bracelet it changes the length and is too long.
  • 2 small white beads, 2 large white beads
  • 2 small aqua beads, 2 large aqua beads
  • 2 small blue beads, 2 large blue beads
  • 4 clear crystal beads
  • 4 shell beads (2 with aqua stripe, 2 with royal stripe)
  • one charm (word or starfish)
  • 10-12 inches of Stretch Magic cord
  • An Instructions Card (see below)  Download FREE instructions pdf
 
 Get crafty with your group this week.  ENJOY!  ~Sarah