Contrariwise ramblings

I haven't been posting as much in this blog for the last couple weeks. Between work, spring break, and a new commission I got, I've been pretty busy.

The commission I received came from the very first customer from my Etsy shop! Yes she helped start my business. She's an old friend of mine. Her parents will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a small party and she wanted to give prayer bracelets to the eight ladies at the celebration.

I had never heard of prayer bracelets before. So I had to do a little research on the internet. I found out that these bracelets always have a little box on them that contains a prayer. And while you wear the bracelet, it reminds you of the prayer and God's blessings to you. Here are the boxes that are often used in these bracelets:
Most of the bracelets available on the internet seemed to have a similar style, which I thought my friend would expect. The bracelets usually were made of swarovski crystals or round beads with spacers. So I sent her some typical examples from the internet, thinking she could pick out the style/beads and then I could make something similar.

Well she didn't like any of them very much.

Uh oh.

Apparently her idea of a prayer bracelet was not what was typical on the internet So I then sent her photos of all kinds of styles of bracelets, examples of styles from the internet as well as some of my own creations, all of which could be used as a prayer bracelet by simply adding a prayer bos.

It turned out that she liked my work better than any of the others!

On the left is a picture of the bracelet she liked.

Now I had about 10 days to make eight bracelets for her, including getting supplies.

My suggestion was to make them all similar, using identical prayer boxes, clasps, and silver spacers for each. But then make them unique by using different types and colors of glass beads for each.


Luckily, I have a pretty large collection of glass beads that I've collected over the years, so this would not be an issue. The most important thing was finding the prayer boxes and finishing the bracelets on time.

Tomorrow I'll write about my search for the prayer boxes and tell you about how this commission turned out!

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