Leather and pearl sterling bracelet
I am still not sure if I am a fan of the leather look or the not, but regardless of my feelings about leather, I know that there is a large call for leather in jewelry accessories.
As a note, this particular piece has been made, not with leather, but with a fabric (often satin) cord. I prefer the leather. I find the fabric cords like this snag something wicked, unless you can get your hands on some waxed cotton, which actually is not that difficult.
If you have not yet learned the tricks to wire wrapping, you definitely need to sit down and spend some time practicing. There are so many jewelry pieces that depend on wrapping to attach pearls (and usually briolette cut gemstones) to jewelry. If you do not have access to jewelry quality soldering equipment, or if you just like the look of hand wrapping then you just must. There is nothing else to it.
I will spend some time going over the seventeen billion websites that have instructions for wire wrapping (there are SO many out there! Some are drek and some are decent) and give you a quick review of those I think are worth your time and those I think are a waste.
The trick to this particular piece is the ends. You need crimp end pieces. Not ribbon crimp ends, because those simply fold over, but crimp ends that are round metal beads, sealed closed on one end, but open on the other and allows you to feed the ends of the leather into a small cup. Once all the leather ends are in there, you just do as the name suggests and crimp the metal closed, thus trapping all the leather pieces together and holding the bracelet together. Make sense?
The pearls have been attached to the leather by wire wrapping, but in addition to being wrapped to the leather, the leather thong pieces have then been tied in knots around the wire wrapping, thus effectively double tying the pearls in place. This keeps the pearls from sliding up and down the leather thongs, anchoring them specifically where you choose to place them.
All in all, this really is a lovely piece. The nice thing about pieces like these is that you can find leather and pearls (or whatever beads you want) in a wide variety of colors, so you are literally limited by your imagination. You could use pink leather and turquoise pieces in place of the pearls if you wished - something along those lines. This piece really has a lot of potential. You could mix and match so many beads, stones and pearls on a wild mix of different colors of leathers intertwined with chains. So much potential! Give it a shot!
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