Wedding DIY: bow bracelets (bridesmaid gift)

Today I bring you a dainty DIY -- surprise, surprise, another wedding project! My idea came from this pin, originally:

(via)

I think the caption said something like, "thanks for helping us tie the knot!" -- I love a good wedding pun. I had been working with floral wire when I made the monogrammed hangers, so I thought this may be another project I could utilize it for. 

 

Floral wire runs about $4 at Michael's, if you know a man you likely have free access to pliers, and..well.. I hope you have a pen. Not pictured: 8 feet of plain necklace-type chain, from Michael's, and a "jewlery kit" (with the little claspy-things), each $4. 

Total for this project: $12.00 (for 5 bracelets!) 

SO, here's how you do it:

1.) about an inch up from the end of the wire (I like to leave it on the roll until a later step), wrap the wire around the pen (like above). This gives it a nice rounded form.  (and ignore my stress-cuticle in the above photo.. O_o.. gross).

2.) Move the pen adjacent to the first loop, and make a second loop. Make sure that both pieces that will form the "tails" of the bow are on the same side of the wire that crosses over them.  (You can see in the above photo, both parts of what will be the "tails" are on the back side of that wire that's the bottom of the loop).

3.) Take the tails and cross them. In #2, you'll see they are running parallel. Just make sure they point on opposite sides of the "loop" they belong to. Does that make sense, at all? Then, take the "tail" that's still connected to the roll of wire, and bring it up and "over" the loops (see above photo), and then bring it back down behind it (this forms the central "knot").. like this: 

4.) Ta-da! bow. Cut off the rest of the roll of wire. I then use the ridges on the nose of the pliers to file down the tips since cutting can make them pretty sharp. I then used a combo of my fingers and the pliers to flip the tails of the bow out a little bit. I liked the way it looked better than the straight one.

5.) (Not pictured) I cut the long chain to what I thought would fit a wrist (and fixed it after fitting it), and assembled the clasp/loop. I then strung it through both sides of the loops of the bow and, voila:

 

Bow bracelet! I only hope I guesstimated the sizes for the girls correctly. It's hard to visualize someone and then try to picture their wrists. :-/ .. worst case scenario, it doesn't fit, and I take it home to my "shop" to remedy it quick with another strand of $4 chain.

 

I bought the linen bags for $5 (for 12) and I had the tags from my escort card project. I love them! I've added them to the bag with the earrings I also purchased for each girl (which resemble my earrings, but are square).

I just wanted to say something about my DIY's. (Mostly before I do a post about how I'm going to hand-calligraphy all of the invitations and you all think I'm nutty). I'm sure some people may look at the long list of DIY's under the wedding tab and think I'm a perfectionist, or that I obsess over the details. I know nobody (or very few people) will notice the writing on the envelopes. I'm sure not a lot of people will appreciate the time that went into the escort cards. And honestly? Escort cards could have been done WAY quicker, but that's not the point. The point, for me, is that I absolutely love spending time on wedding-related DIY's.

I like being creative, I like making things... I'm also (obviously) really excited about the wedding and marrying M. I also know the day itself will go by quick! I use this time crafting, preparing, to prolong that excitement about the day as much as I can. SO, that's why I DIY. Not because I'm anal about details, not because I think most people will even notice, not because if my wedding doesn't have hand-calligraphied envelopes I'll JUST.DIE., but because I truly love expending energy towards what will undoubtedly be the best day of my life.

mush over, hope you liked the bracelets :)