Remix

Moon Phases Bracelet on Etsy

A while back I was playing with ideas for sun and moon bracelets with varying success.  One of the planned bracelets depicted all the phases of the moon, but since that left a lot of extra space I stuck in some stars, included a different-colored border and chose the wrong beads.  No, really. It looked like this:

 The background is a really pretty blueberry color-lined Japanese cut bead, while the dark side of the moon is a size 10 dark silver lined Czech, the light side of the moon might be either a size 10 silver-lined Czech or a light-brown (it looked gray when I bought it) lined size 11 Czech.  The stars and border are Czech 11s, as well.

If you're not familiar with beads, let me explain; Japanese beads are supposedly more uniform in size (it's true if you get quality ones, but these don't seem to have been), they are much more square in shape, and they are generally a bit larger than the Czech beads of the "same size".

Czech beads are more distinctly rounded and oblong, and while the two sizes aren't hugely different to the untrained eye, mixing them can create certain problems if you're not careful.  Problems like wobbling edges (see picture on right).

Of course, the blame for that is also due to the Japanese beads being a different shape than the Czech ones--and actually, I'm fairly certain those Japanese beads were different sizes from themselves.

But for some reason I listed it one Etsy anyway, and added 'remake the moon bracelet' to my list of things to do.

Well, I finally got around to doing that!  I removed the stars, ditched the border, left out the dark side of the moon entirely and used beads that were the same size.  After all that I created a bracelet that looks like this:

See how smooth the edges are? See how bright the moon shines...wait. You can hardly see the moon!  Well, I know that now, but I didn't until I was too far into making the bracelet to stop.  It's also too long and empty, since I'm still a bit fuzzy on how long bracelets with box-clasps need to be (it's about half an inch shorter than the ones with snaps, but I can never figure out how many beads that is).  But at least it's better than the last one, and I'm not embarrassed to have it up on Etsy.

Maybe some day I'll make a third moon-phases bracelet and get it right.