Holiday Party Bracelet

I'm a little behind on posting about this bracelet...in December I took a break from finishing projects that are already started to play with some color. I have a portion of beads pulled for a Spring/Summer 2015 collection so I looked at what I had set aside.  The dress I wore for one of our holiday events is a Nicole Miller with a ton of different colors which gave me lots of options to play with new beads.  

I had picked up these great green twisted bugle beads from Bead Haven when I was in Frankenmuth then decided to use them with a stitch that I learned from Huib Petersen's class that I took a number of years ago.  The bugle beads were longer than I had used in the past, so I decided to try using larger seed beads too.  

This bracelet uses size 8 seed beads along with the 11.5 mm long bugles.  It was really different for me to try to weave with these beads.  Larger holes make it so the needle falls in and out of them much easier than I'm used to, and I had quite a time trying to get the stitching to tighten up, I ended up passing a lot of thread through the entire bracelet.  The bracelet ended up being approximately 7 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.  In retrospect I had some issues with the edges of the bugle beads being sharp and having to weave back through with my thread.  Being much larger bead holes I should have tried some thread other than nymo.  I do have spiderwire along with some other threads on hand in a pinch.  If I have another issue I'll try re-doing it.

This is the Nicole Miller dress, 

the colors are really much brighter than this image...

I'm not sure I would do this stitch this big again unless it was for an installation piece.  I like it much better in a smaller, more delicate size. Usually when I stitch this bracelet it's about .75 inches wide (I use shorter bugle beads).

As I play catch-up on jewelry that I've been making and compile a bead order based on projects that are waiting for more of a color (I now have 3 pieces that are waiting for me to order from Fire Mountain gems) here's a teaser of what's to come: