ELASTIC IS THE SECRET!
Well, not exactly a secret at this point in time….
During the past several years, we have seen an increase in bracelets strung on clear or black and for all I know, colored, elastic. I always found most of them to be a bit delicate, very stretchy and seemed to me to be fairly breakable. If I could break the thread by stretching a length of it as hard as I could, then that would not serve my purpose.
I understood that the elastic had to be thin to pass through various semi-precious stone beads, crystal and many other materials, but it wasn’t for me.
Now I also avoid Soft Flex and Beadalon because I feel that the crimp beads on each side of the clasp can be stressed to breaking point, (because sweat seems to weaken the thread…) and then the beads scatter, never to be fully collected again if the accident happens in a restaurant or on the street. I did experiment with these cords years ago and found that they were inclined to break in bed… an errant big toe…well..
When I opened my gallery, over six years ago, I began using Stretch Magic to make bracelets. I even used it to construct them using wonderful historical trade beads and the best of my own signed lamp work. If the hole in the trade bead or silver I was using was a little too small, I stretched the first foot of the elastic as long as I could, denting my fingers and stressing both my hands and the elastic until I had pulled it into a smaller circumference. After snipping off the short length remaining in my hand, I had a smaller thread end to work with. Once the beads were on, I could stretch the elastic enough to persuade them to slide further down the length, giving me room to put more onto the elastic to complete the design.
I have learned to thread up to 15 bracelets on the Stretch Magic without having to cut it into segments until I wish to finish and tie them off one at a time. In this way I don’t have to stress and stretch the elastic for each bracelet. It is important to add here that you can buy round silver beads for the designs with larger holes. I use 2.5mm round seamless silver beads as spacers, as well as the “Balinese” daisies and various kinds of copper beads too.
Now. Stretch Magic changes it’s tension radically between the 1mm and the 1.5mm. The latter was quite hard to find a few years ago and I had to order 25 rolls at a time in order to please the supplier. I suspect it is easier to buy now. I have seen it in smaller rolls than the ones I use, on Ebay. It certainly was not available in any of the catalogs I keep handy. Maybe things have changed… I hardly have the time to check these things these days!
The 1.5mm Stretch Magic elastic is miraculously strong. My gallery sells lots and lots of bracelets and I can remember only a couple ever coming back to be repaired. That is amazing. The elastic can be trusted. I have a male friend who lives in the desert and works pretty hard out there, taking care of his horses and goodness knows what else. I know he digs the ground because he recently found a small Dinosaur and is working with a museum to identify it etc. He wears one of my bracelets, made with 2,000 year old granite beads from Djenne, Mali, put together with copper hishi from the Giriama tribe in Kenya. Last time I checked, the bracelet was at least three years old and he never takes it off. There… does that convince you?!
I don’t have a picture of the bracelet handy but here is a necklace to show you what it looked like.