This past Shabbat we had a special visitor, a young woman from New York who I watched grow up and now she's watching my kids grow up! She happens to have great taste in jewelry and was sporting the exact same bracelet you see on the upper left. I was so surprised to see something that was actually macrame and looked so gorgeous and dressy on account of the marcasite and other beads. On close examination I figured out how it was made except for one small detail, how they glued the ends of the slider piece. I looked up the bracelets, which are called shamballa bracelets, and found a great tutorial which shows that the ends are melted, since nylon cord is used, why of course!
Here's the tutorial on You Tube for making these bracelets and it's really so simple I thought I'd pass it on to you all. Certainly a great thing to get started on for holiday gift giving and the type of jewelry that while hand made looks amazing. One small suggestion— do use marcasite beads as in the bracelet on the left, it gives the piece a lovely weight, as the marcasite beads are comparatively heavy, being that they're stone.
If you live in the US, and you'd like to buy a bracelet, my friend bought hers on line here, for a reasonable price and no this is not a sponsored post, just passing along what I think is some great jewelry making info.
Enjoy!
