Our first workshop at Governors Island was a great success! Despite the heat outside, we enjoyed a steady stream of lively, fun and enthusiastic jewelry makers!

This workshop was focused on making simple, pretty single bracelets. I created a few dozen starter "kits" to choose from that included an overlapping round of bracelet-sized memory wire with one side bent into a small loop, in either gold or silver, along with a half strand of stones or two frosted, cut-to-fit jelly tubes for those who might want a quick fix. With these, it's string one jelly tube, some focals, and another jelly tube and done! For those who wanted stones, I included various colors and types, and I have to say, purple was the overwhelming favorite with all ages. :)

For the stoners (ha), I asked them to bead just slightly less than halfway around for a basic center-accented bracelet, and then they got to pick through another stash of various slightly larger focal stones to their liking. After choosing and stringing those, they beaded the rest of the base of the bracelet. It was at this point that they got to decide whether they wanted to complete the clasp and try out some basic wire work. The task was to bend the open wire end over itself and squeeze to round it off, and then to move a few millimeters in and bend the wire to a 45 degree angle, almost back on top of the beads, to serve as a hook. We had a few takers and a few naturals, but I have to say, memory wire is some tough stuff to work with. This is why it's ideal to work with too - it really holds its shape and gives one a great result without a lot of fuss!

Here's a couple of samples:

Decently simple, right? It was wonderful to watch everybody get creative. Many went totally asymmetrical, some spent a lot of time thinking about it, doing and redoing, and some sharp cookies were digging into the awaiting kit bags to mix it up when I wasn't looking. A little bootleg bracelet-making. It was awesome. There was plenty and it's usually best to stay out of the way of any budding artistes if you can help it. Ha.

On that note, I'd like to thank my daughter for coming out with me and for placing personally drawn notebook pictures at every seat, for everyone who sat down. By the end of the day, I think she told Kelly she was going to charge twenty bucks for them.

She's five.

And on THAT note, I'd also like to thank Kelly, Karin, Suzanne and Ruby for their patience and helpfulness. Lorelei was so excited to be with you gals, and I was so happy to meet and talk with you all!

So, that's it for last week's workshop. Stay tuned for next week's. There's great stuff happening every weekend!

Take care, Everybody.

Melissa / Prairiefunk