Spring is (almost!!) here, and what better way to celebrate the return of short sleeves than a wrist full of bracelets? With this in mind, we chose a fun new palette of leather strap bracelets based on the 2012 Spring Pantone Color Chart. These triple-wrap bracelets are 1/2″ wide and feature three snaps for an adjustable fit. The gorgeous colors are created with lead-free vegetable dyes. Vegetable dyes are color fast, but you should avoid getting your leather bracelets soaking wet, as it could damage the leather.
Leather bracelets are easy to customize and fun to wear. Here are some of the ways our design team dressed them up:
Some of the brighter and bolder Pantone-inspired color choices - Solar Power, Lagoon, Bellflower and Pink Punch! The concrete gray makes a great neutral base for many colors, including sapphire crystals.
Most of our designers chose to sew their beads, charms, crystals and other decorations in place. Pretty much any stringing material can work, depending on the situation. We used Nymo, Superlon, embroidery floss, hemp and even wire.
From the top: Jaci used a jeweler's saw to cut skulls out of sheet metal. I attached bronze clay charms and bronze shade crystal margaritas. Laurae stitched crystal channels on with wire. Toni used freshwater pearls and antiqued brass filigree.
Use a rotary hole punch tool or an awl to make holes where needed, and stitch away! Just be sure to choose a thread thickness that feels durable enough for the weight of the items you are attaching.
As you can see, our stitch methods varied a lot. Mine are quite clumsy while Toni's are practically invisible - but they all worked! Laurae's wire was the most problematic to sew with, but it does add a nice heft to the bracelet.
Another leather embellishing option is to use rivets and/or eyelets. Eyelets line holes nicely for durability, which allows you to hang charms from them, like on Sondra’s stack of ankh bracelets:
Simple and stylish wrapped leather bracelets in black, dark brown and scarlet leather. I wanted to name that color of red "lipstick red" but was out-voted on the grounds that not all lipstick is red! Scarlet won because it is a pretty true red without orange or brown tones.
Polly used the Crafted Findings riveting system to attach TierraCast charms and spacer beads to her purple leather bracelet. The teal blue bracelet uses evenly spaced eyelets to create an industrial style, while Toni used a couple of large leather eyelets to create attachment points for pretty charms and beads.
The front pearl bracelet is on "Silly Putty" colored leather. The pinkish yet neutral color is hard to describe, but somehow we all agreed silly putty summed it up!
I stitched Dark Indigo bicone drops in place over the bezel loops on my "Clueless" bracelet to make spikes.
I had a hard time rounding up all these bracelets … I didn’t quite have to pry them off people’s wrists, but almost. They’ve been getting a lot of wear – and a lot of compliments! We hope you have just as much fun creating your own jewelry with them! ~ Cindy
PDF 
