Large Hole Beads and Leather - Perfect Together! AND a Giveaway!

I have been on this large hole bead-making kick lately, mostly because I love making them.  But they are fairly versatile.  I have customers who use them on dog leads, bracelets, and who just collect them! Here are some of my recent designs.

Today I'm going to show you some bracelets you can make withe the ammonite pressed ones!

My friend Melinda Orr (who lives fairly close to me but I only seem to see at Bead Fest!) makes awesome jewelry and has this amazing ability to just sit down and experiment and come up with really cool things!  She also has a great shop and she was the first person I thought of when I wanted to use leather with these beads.  We did a little swap, and I sent her some ammonite beads sets, and she sent me some leather, clasps and jump rings.

Here's what I  made with the beads and components!

This first bracelet was made with four strips of 2mm leather, end caps and a pretty floral clasp.  I twisted the leather slightly to make it a little bit interesting!  In adding the end caps, I glued one end on first, then added the beads, then cut the leather to length and added the final end cap. I used E6000 glue but Melinda says you can even use super glue! 

This second bracelet was made with 4mm leather, some pretty large hole silver beads in the swirl shape that matches the ammonite shape, and end caps and lobster clasp.  The ammonite large hole beads move a little bit in this design, which is fine with me, but if you don't want them to move at all, you can use larger leather diameter or what I did in the next photo.

For this bracelet, the leather is more like 6mm width.  I had a harder time getting the large hole bead on the leather, but found one that worked.  I used two enameled headpins that I made on the ends of the large hole bead.  You could do this if you didn't want your beads to move like the ones above.  This clasp is a copper magnetic clasp Melinda sent along. I also decided that if I wanted to use the larger, 6mm leather width, I could just double-dip my large hole bead mandrel to make the hole size slightly larger on the bead!

I can't wait to hop over and see what Melinda made with the beads I sent her.  I had a sneak peek so I know at least one is pretty awesome!  Please visit Melinda's Etsy Shop, and her Bandana Girl shop, for awesome leather components and many other items! 

Please visit Melinda's blog here to see what she made!

I am also offering a giveaway - please comment on this post and on Melinda's and you will be entered to win these beads - drawing by Melinda on Friday!

Susan Kennedy