Craftwise, I’ve been mostly playing with the knitting machine lately (pics soon!). And soaking off stamps – but that’s a whole other story. I got to wondering if the jewellery making bug had passed, which would be a bit sad since I’d had a few projects I’d been enthusiastic about but hadn’t tracked down all the material for. For some of the projects I’m still waiting on the online shop to send me the items that weren’t in stock at the time. Had all the waiting stalled my creative drive?

Perhaps not. All it took was sitting down and looking over everything to get fired up again. It turned out that one project was not meant to be a necklace, but a bracelet – with turtles:

And I decided that these beads needed to be bracelets too, and converted some earring hooks to make the clasps:

And then a bracelet I saw on Pinterest inspired me to use these leftover paper beads from a necklace:

I also whipped up a bracelet helper. It’s just something you hang on to the end of your bracelet draped over the top of your wrist to weigh it down, making it easier to bring it in reach of the clasp. All you need is a hook and something heavy – but not heavy enough to damage the bracelet of course. I used this old belt clip:

And lastly, do you remember this shawl pin I bought at the Bendy Show and intended to use as a hair pin?

Well it turned out to be made of such weak, floppy wire that I couldn’t see it holding up the weight of a shawl or my hair. Just holding the pin made it bend. So disappointing. Having seen lots of wire wrapped jewellery on Pinterest recently, I wondered if that might make it a bit more stable. So I gave it a go, and it did help a lot. I still don’t want to rely on it to hold the weight of a shawl or my hair so it became…

Yep, another bracelet:

I used the pin to complete the circle, joined it with more wire wrapping and bent the end into a hook:

So I don’t think the jewellery-making bug has gone quiet yet. In fact, I’ve had to add more hooks to the wall of my dressing table nook to accommodate all these new bracelets. And I have more ideas waiting to be tried.