I’m on some kind of crafting kick this month – first the fascinator and now these sparkly little beauties!

Eight homemade chunky glass bracelets

I have recently rediscovered the fabulousness of accessories. Yet at around about the same time, I also discovered that too many seemingly simple accessories (made of, say, string and a few beads) are overpriced to the point of craziness. As such, I thought I might try my hand at making my own.

Now, I wouldn’t say I have a finger on the pulse of fashion, but I peruse a Cosmo or two often enough to have an idea of what’s what. And this summer, it’s all about chunky jewellery. Be it in bracelet or necklace form, the stylista about town wants to be wearing big, chunky, statement stones (or glass).

I decided I would make myself a bracelet, and while I was at it, I’d make one for a friend (birthday) and one for a cousin (first baby). After all, we girls love baubles. And I think there’s something extra thoughtful about giving friends homemade gifts… provided, of course, they look good! I took my inspiration from Asos, a Fair Trade jewellery shop and some high street-type shops.

As I’m a bit of a newbie in the make-your-own-jewellery stakes, I decided to keep things as simple as possible: pretty beads on stretchy string, with no fussy clasps and no call for glue guns or other tools.

I headed to Creative Breadcraft at 20 Beak Street in Soho to pick up my supplies. I explained my vision to a staff member, and she pointed out the elastic I needed and showed me to the glass beads.

I bought beads for two blue bracelets and two green ones, but I actually had enough for four of each – sort of an eyes/stomach situation. Making these bracelets was ridiculously easy. In fact, I was done in two steps!

Here are my bracelet-making supplies:

Beads, elastic and scissors

Step one: start stringing. The shop’s resident expert advised me to use three strands of elastic at once, as the beads I selected were quite heavy and the shop was out of heavier-gauge elastic.

I cut three long strands, knotted them together at the bottom, and started threading beads. I didn’t have any specific plan for which beads went where; I just strung them as I thought they might look good. Freestyle crafting, if you will.

Threading the beads

Step two: snip when ready. Once I had threaded enough beads to fit my wrist, I knotted the bracelet. Resident expert cautioned me to tie tight, to tie three times, and to really pull on the bracelet before snipping loose ends. This should make for a more fixed knot, hopefully rendering that awkward snapped bracelet/beads on floor situation a little less likely.

Snipping the excess elastic

Really, two steps — that’s all there was to it! Once I had made one, I was pretty quick off the mark to make a second, a third and so on. It was quite satisfying.

Technical note: please forgive the big mitts (ok, mine) in the above photos. I swear I don’t actually have man-hands, it’s just the angle. That or my hands are really unphotogenic? (Aside: I finally see the vital role hand models play in our world. I’d salute them, if in doing so I didn’t run the very real risk of blocking out the sun.)

After I wrapped the project, I asked a friend (blessed with more photogenic hands) to model the green bracelets – here they are:

Ready to wear

Total spent: £26.22 and 45 minutes of crafting time. (No money in the swear jar this time, either – these bracelets were much less challenging than the fascinator.)

Receipt for beads and elastic

Total saved: According to my research, a chunky bracelet made with glass beads goes for between £10 and £40. Let’s pick a conservative £15: for eight bracelets, that’s a total spend of £120! Madness, I tell you. But it means I saved an astounding £93.78. Can the mark-up on jewellery really be so high?