Here's Hex Nut Bracelet part 2!
I got the idea
here (as always, if you click on the picture, it will lead you to the original post). She used washers and made a necklace, but those washers are big-- statement-necklace sized, and I have all these smaller, bracelet-sized hex nuts. You use what you've got! and it works! (most of the time!)
Basic idea: wrap a bunch of hex nuts in embroidery floss/string, lace them together, and make it a bracelet.
I used hex nuts, obviously, embroidery floss from my parents' house (we used them for making hair wraps when I was little, so we had a lot), and a big ol' needle to make wrapping easier.
In the original post, she superglued the loose end to the washer. When I was doing it, I hadn't actually read all of her instructions, and I left a tail on mine. You can do it either way, but I was happy with mine because it gave me something more than just the little nut to hold on to, and it ended up being how I tied them together at the end.
I didn't need a whole lot of thread to wrap it, maybe about an arms length, which left enough of a tail for me to use them to make the ties later.
Holding the loose end and the hex nut in one hand, I threaded the needle around, doing one full loop and then going back and covering all the gaps, which were usually around one of the points of the hexagon. By the time I was done, they looked much more like donuts than hexagons.
Once I had pretty much all the metal covered, I knotted off the ends, but left the excess on.
Repeat!
Before I connected my little donuts together, I laid them out so I knew in what pattern I would be tying them. In my first bracelet (the pinks) I used the thread of the previous hex nut to attach it to the following one. For the blue and purple bracelet, though, I worked from the outside in, blue to purple to blue to light blue, so that the middle purple was attached to both the light blues. If that confused you, look back at the picture at the top of the post, you should be able to see what I'm trying to describe!
To link them, I threaded the needle onto the longest tail of the preceding hex nut, and looped it around the following one twice, then knotted it securely with the short tail. I looped it only once on my first bracelet, but I wanted it to be more secure on the second one.
Once I had them all tied together, I cut off all the tails and used the long ones to make the ties on the bracelet. If your ends are too short or you want specific colors for your ties, just cut more embroidery floss. I needed mine about seven inches or so. Now, there are options here. You can just knot them on to one of the hex nuts, you can use a jump ring, or you can do what I did.
First, I threaded four lengths onto a needle.
Here's the tricky part. With the needle in the middle of the thread, I pulled it about halfway through the hex nut on the end. Then I flipped the needle back through the hex nut and carefully wiggled it back out with my finger in the loop, keeping it intact.
After I had successfully maintained my loop, I pulled the loose ends through, finishing off with a knot at the end and a snip to make my ends even.
And there you go! another creative way to use hardware store leftovers.
Questions, comments, suggestions, clarification? anything?
Leave me a comment and let me know!
Then I started knotting the thread. I used a technique I learned when I was in elementary school, making clip-in hair wraps (I was super cool), and you also use it when you make friendship bracelets. I've heard it referred to as a 4 knot, since it looks like a number 4. (here're instructions in the friendship-bracelet form) It's essentially just knotting one strand around another. Here, I used the needle to pull the embroidery floss through a link, creating the knot, first on one side, then the other, back and forth. (If you want to see bigger pictures, just click on them.)
