Tatted "Rock" Bracelet

This bracelet has tatting surrounding polymer clay beads. It's based on a very simple tatting pattern: R 3-3-3-3. Ch 5-5 (for the short ch) or ch 5-3-3-5 (for the long ch). The large beads are added during joining. So the picots that hold the beads need to be long enough -- when measured open, they are twice the length of the bead plus a bit extra.

I swirled several duller colors together and used an organic (lumpy!) shape in an attempt to come up with a "rock" look for the beads. (Actually, they came out resembling a mixture of concrete and brick -- not all that attractive, but I still used them -- tatting makes any bead look great!) After baking them I painted on a coat of "Sculpey" glaze. The glaze gives a marvelous shiny finish but tends to pool in a blob at the bottom of the bead while drying; I tried to minimize this by standing the beads on pins stuck into a disposable aluminum pan.

The way I get the beads on is, I put the bead onto a small crochet hook, then hook into the picot I am joining to, pull the bead onto the picot, and finish making the join.

The smaller seed beads were strung on the ball thread before starting to tat. Since I used a chunky thread for this project (size 10 "Flora") the seed beads were size 8, a little larger than most common seed beads.

I used a lobster claw clasp for closing the bracelet, but I'm not sure if I care for that type of closure on this bracelet. I'm going to try something different next time.