Zombie Bears Lampwork Bracelet

Cute & Scary....

Like a lot of people, I started making jewellery thinking I could make myself lots of cheap and cheerful pieces that suited my taste. As with many other branches of craft, however, over time I realised you could make yourself even more fabulous things if you started trading up and buying more expensive beads and findings.

These days, my very favourite beads are handmade lampwork glass. Not handmade by me I hasten to add. I have seen glass beadmaking demonstrated a few times and I soo don't have the steadiness of hand for it. Hence, for my glassy fix, I like to buy unusual beads from lampwork artists at fairs or online.

My favourite ever beadmaker is By Keiara. Keiara has an amazing selection of fab, kookie beads, as well as well as more traditional art focals and bead sets. I particular like her Goth and Halloween Beads, so when I spied this set of green zombie bear beads in her shop at the weekend, I just couldn't resist.

I am almost ashamed to say that the beads only arrived today and, bypassing several dozen other pending projects, I decided I needed to make them into a bracelet right away!

The bear beads are drilled through the side, so I decided to start by mounting each one on a eye pin with a green Swarovski bicone at each side. Luckily I had enough of the same colour - I keep a mix of crystal bicones on hand but it's always hold your breath time to see if I've got enough of the exact colour I need.

Spacing was the next issue (I spend far too much time thinking about spacer beads - buying focal beads is often like buying a skirt with no top to match it). I decided that black goes well with zombie green. Handily, I had a good supply of black lampwork spacer beads and enough black Swarovski bicones to make matching spacer pieces.

Having got five bears and five spacers ready, I then needed to check roughly how much bracelet I'd managed to assemble. I think bracelets (with the possible exception of the elastic ones) are the hardest pieces to make as you have to be fairly precise about the length. It looked like I'd got enough to join the bears and spacers together with the eye pin loops rather than needing to add jump rings, so I started doing that. In the event, I was able to use four spacers rather than five and I finished off with simple closed jump ring and lobster clasp.

I always find it's easy to make great jewellery when starting with great beads and these are beautifully made, so thanks Keiara. I'm looking forward to showing off my new bracelet. I have a wonderful friend at work who always admires my stuff, but then finds it's not quite what she thought. She'll say, "that's cute" and I'll say, "thanks, it's a dead cat" or similar and she'll give me a look that implies it would have been better if I hadn't have pointed that part out.

Wonder what she'll make of the cute bears when she finds out they're zombies...

Melx