There we go, I think.
Great.
Maybe.
There.
Now do yourself a favor.
When you're picking out your beads and if you must have one that has a smallish hole
like these little round ones, make sure your other ones all have reasonably sized holes
that aren't going to give you a problem because you will hate doing this if you have to fight
with every single bead, but there are plenty out there that have large enough holes.
So here we have our cluster started.
Like I said, I'm going to do groups of six beads.
Where did it go?
On that other bracelet that I showed you, they actually went on because they have smaller
focals, they actually did clusters of three and then went on to their next focal, but
my focals are so much bigger that I'm going to do clusters of six.
So I shall pause, come back and show you how to proceed.
I'm going to finish the cluster on this side and the cluster on this side and then I will
show you how to continue.
So here I am back again as promised with the clusters on either side of the center focal
bead completed.
Now in case I wasn't clear on what you do, on each of these three strands if you're doing
clusters of three, you simply do one small bead on each of these strands.
If you're doing clusters of six, do two small beads on each strand.
I like to do one on each and then go back and do one on each one again just so that
I get them nice and tight.
Now the next step is to take all three cords, treat them as one again and just make another
knot just like you did on either side of the focal bead and make this knot, take your time
and make it nice and tight right up against that cluster.
The tighter you get it there, the firmer your cluster will be.
So do that on either side, just treating all three strands as one and making a simple knot.
Okay.
Now it's time to grab one of your other focal beads.
Take one strand and string it on.
Sometimes with nuggets, the trick can be finding where they found to drill the hole.
It can be in any direction and then just like we did our original focal bead, we've got
a knot on one side and a knot on the other.
Because these are kind of lumpy and bumpy chips, you can kind of decide which way you
want them to fit.
I think that seems to be comfortable like that.
Again treating all three of these as one, tie a knot and slide it nice and tight up
against your focal bead and we do the same on this other side and the way you get it
nice and tight up against your bead is to just take your time and I kind of use my thumb
nail and I keep pushing and pushing and there it is.
You don't have to pull really hard.
The wax on the twine does the job.
If you pull too hard you can break this stuff so don't do that.
Don't make that mistake.
Ask me how I know.
So that's starting to look really cool and now we repeat the clusters.
So the way the pattern goes, it's simply focal beads alternating with clusters of smaller
beads with a knot , but I'm using all three strands in between each one.
That's all the pattern is.
Again I can show you on this one.
So here's the focal bead, a knot, a cluster, a knot, a focal bead, a knot and so on, a
cluster, a knot and that's it.
That's the whole pattern.
So I'm going to go ahead and add these remaining clusters.
Now I'm going to add one on each side and then I will add these focals and then I'm
going to take a measurement and see where we're at with the bracelet so I'll come back
when that's done.
So here we are back again and you can see that I've gone ahead and added two more clusters
of six small beads and the two more focal beads.
Like I said, it's simply alternating focals with clusters with a knot in between each
one.
That is your entire pattern.
Now this is the point at which I'm ready to take a measurement and see where we're at
with this bracelet.
An average wrist size is about 7" so I don't want this bracelet to be any larger than 7".
Because it's adjustable, it can fit much bigger sizes than that so let's lay that right up
at 0 and we're at about 6 1/2" so I need to stop there because my little slider is going
to take up about an inch.
Maybe I need to make the slider a little smaller than say the one on this bracelet.
This one is, let's see.
It's about 3/4" so maybe I'll make this slider a little smaller.
I don't know who is going to get this bracelet and I would hate for it to be big and sloppy
and uncomfortable on somebody with a small wrist, although this is a pretty chunky bracelet.
So the next step is for me to show you how to make the slider.
So I won't be using these beads today.
We'll save those for another project and I won't be using these.
Generally the strands of beads that you buy, they come like this.
That's a lot of chips because there was this whole other thing.
I probably have enough chips to make four bracelets and there were I think there were
six of these and there were a whole pile of these red nuggets so I bought six different
strands of beads and I probably have enough on there to make at least two or three bracelets
if not more.
If you got creative with the leftovers you could get even more.
So when we come back I will be ready to show you how to finish up your bracelet by making
the slider.
See you then.
So now we're ready to finish our bracelet by making an adjustable slider that you can
move to get it on and off.
The way we're going to do that is to lay your bracelet down on a surface, take the three
cords that are on the right, bring them up and over so they're pointing to the left.
Next take the three cords that are on the left and bring those up and over across the
others so they're pointing to the right.
So now you can see it's starting to look like a bracelet.
This is one reason we like to have a lot of extra cord is so that you have plenty of room
to work.
We're going to build our slider over these six strands right here.
In fact, that's what I'm going to call this right now is our six strand bundle and it's
just by taking the two sets of three cords and crossing them over each other to form
your bracelet.
So the next thing you'll need are two 12" pieces of the cord and we'll start by making
a loop about a few inches from the end, 2-3 inches from the end.
Make a loop, have the short end on the left and poke this under your six strand bundle
and then just put both ends right up through the loop
and then pull it snug.
Actually right here you can see, let me zoom in for you, what we're making here.
This is called a lark's head knot in case you were interested and this is what it should
look like.
Keep that short end on the left and just pull it snug.
Next we'll take our other 12" cord and do the same thing.
Make a loop a few inches from the end only this time tuck the loop from the top down
and then repeat.
Go ahead and poke both ends.
(Fumble fingers.)
Here we go.
Pull both ends through.
Keep that shorter end on the left and pull it snug and snug it up against the first knot
that you made.