Overcoming Fear By Pulling Out My Pretties For Two New Bracelets

OK, I admit it!  I’m a hoarder.  I’m a hoarder of pretty things.  I have so many small pieces that I’ve been saving for something special that I could make hundreds of special somethings.  I finally decided that I needed to get a backbone and just go for it.

The first bracelet I created was a very light pink and white with a touch of crystal (in the form of some Swarovski clear AB rhinestones).  Sometimes inspiration comes in strange ways, here’s the story.

I had a very nice orphaned flower earring that was made up of individual white glass petals with a rhinestone.  I loved the earring, but the rhinestones on about half the petals were missing.  I completely took the earring apart, pried out all the old rhinestones and replaced them. 

When I put the new crystal rhinestones in each petal, I suddenly remembered a woman I had seen while grocery shopping months ago.  She had rhinestone set in one of her front teeth.  I was so fascinated with the crystal in her tooth, I spent a long time looking at her mouth.  Her lipstick was a pale pink.  I added my little crystal teeth to the bracelet and began embellishing.  I pulled together frosted pink beads, silver metal beads and pretty pale buttons.  I had been saving the pink buttons with the inset crystal.  They look beautiful in that bracelet.

Onto the second bracelet…

After dropping off my eldest at camp, I decided to stop in at the craft store to look for 18 gauge wire.  While I was at the store, I decided to look at bead caps.  I found some butterfly and flower charms.  I liked them so much I decided to buy them.

When I came home I was really motivated to create another bracelet.  I had found some wonderful vintage pearly blue and green beads at an estate sale.  I started thinking about blue and green color combination.  The beads were too small to stand out against the large butterfly charm.  I decided to pull out some very large (10mm) Swarovski Crystal beads I had been using for magic wands.  I had been using them sparingly because they are a bit expensive.  I mentally kicked myself in the rear and scolded myself for saving all these pretty things for something “worthy”.   I added a blue pearly bead as the flower center, added the silver flower charm and put a green bicone Swarovski crystal bead in back.

Since the flowers and butterflies didn’t seem to fill the charm bracelet up, I dug a little deeper in my stash.  I pulled out some opal colored swarovski crystal donut shaped beads.  I placed them behind a pearly green bead and added several more dongles to my charm bracelet.

Fear of not finding a worthy project for great finds prevents me from truly enjoying them.   Sometimes I forget the joy does not come acquiring, but in the inspiration gained from those acquired things.

I love both of these bracelets.  Even though they contain a considerable amount of new material, some of the materials, such as the buttons, chain and some of the beads are recycled, reused or re-purposed.