January 23, 2012: Happy Braid-Day to Me!

Oh yes... on this day I turned 31 (YIKES!). Thank God I can honestly say that I have quite a bit to show for my 31 years of life so far :) More to come! For my birthday I went to NYC with my mom for the evening for dinner and... some serious jewelry supply shopping! Our favorite place to go is Metalliferous. Unfortunately it is not open on weekends so we decided this was the perfect day. We also visited another favorite - Beads World at Broadway and 38th. Finally, before boarding the train to head home... we went to get me a NEW CAMERA!! Which I plan to use to take quality pictures of myself. No, not real. I will be taking pictures of the things that I create as well as my nephews, memorable moments, family, friends, landscapes, etc! Cannot wait! Stay tuned.

So when I returned from the B-day extravaganza, I was quick to use some of my new clamp-ends and magnet clasps. These two wrap bracelets are made with copper-colored satin cord. One is done using the braid technique described in the January 22nd post. The other is a 4-part braid with a chain weaving in and out of the stitches. Both are closed with magnetic clasps that I have mentioned in other posts.

January 9, 2012: Nothing to Waste!

Having long hair all of my life... (well... that is, since I was old enough to make my own decisions about my hair...) I have had an interest in cool ways to wear my hair and fun things to put in my hair. I had some tie dye T-shirt material left over from the scarf from Sunday so I decided to make some headbands. (Nothing to waste! It is always a good idea to keep your scraps! I will show you something fun to do with your scraps in a future post.)  For each headband I used 4 (about) 20 inch T-shirt strands. Specifically, I used 2 brown and 2 tie dye strands for each. The first one is a 4-part round braid (this is the video that I originally learned this braid from... it is with leather but the technique can be used with your hair, T-shirt material, leather, or whatever! http://youtu.be/0afO40tsqAc ) The second one is also a 4-part braid but flat. This braid can be done a couple of ways. The way this one is made is by taking the strand on the left and going (to the right) over, under, over. Then a new strand is on the left... take that one and do the same: over, under, over. Repeat. There are tons of tutorials out there on different kinds of braids so just get the gist of it and then be creative!