Braided ribbon pearl bracelet
When we saw this bracelet, oh we wanted to purchase it so much, but the price tag of forty odd dollars made us literally laugh out loud. Literally. Forty odd dollars for a few pearls, less than a yard of pink ribbon and a set of bracelet findings? Nope. No. No way. We have those supplies in our craft armoire and can make one of these bracelets without much effort. And certainly without forty dollars worth of effort.
Again as with so many of the jewelry items on Kattitudes, the trick is finding the right finding (oh we love the word play this week). As a reminder, the findings are just the official jewelry terms for the metal pieces that are used to put jewelry together. In this particular case, the findings are the metal pieces that are used at the ends to grab the ribbons and crimp them together. You are looking for crimp end findings. Fortunately, as more and more people get into making their own jewelry, these findings are getting easier to locate, but they used to be quite the challenge. As always, even with our super secret jewelry source houses (because we are in training to be a bench jeweler outside the computer) we still get our best deals and usually our wildest pieces off eBay. Ooh, we hate to admit that, but it is true.
OK, so on this piece, the pearls have been strung onto the ribbon (and that is going to be a bit tricky if your pearls have not been drilled with a larger hole than normal jewelry pearls. You will need to check to see if the diameter of your hole is large enough to fit a ribbon and you might need to use a bead reamer to give yourself a little space in there). Once the pearls are where you like them, the ribbon has simply been braided, then the crimp ends have been mushed into place and voila. You have yourself a forty dollar bracelet for about twenty minutes worth of work. We would say that is a pretty decent pay off, wouldn’t you?
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