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Welcome to the beaded elastic caterpillar bracelet pattern instructions! If you have any difficulty following this tutorial, please post a comment at the bottom of the page on which you are stuck, and I'll do my best to help!
Before you begin ...
| Materials: 2 meters of elastic 0.5mm diameter string, approximately 23 repeating units of bracelet, each containing: 1 false pearl 8mm plastic, 12 of size 15 seed beads, and 5 of 3mm small plastic pearls Time required: About 2.5 hours Techniques: Beadweaving, right angle weave Difficulty: Easy |
Step 1:Okay before I start talking about how to do the pattern, I just wanted to say a word about working with elastic string. It is much thicker than fishing line because it's more breakable so they have to make it thicker so it won't break. However, there are varying thicknesses and I usually use 0.5mm for beading. So what I do before adding a bead to my pattern is I shove a needle through the bead to enlarge the hole. But you can only do this with soft beads like false pearls (as in the picture), not glass beads like seed beads and bugle beads! Another thing you can do to help you get the elastic string through the beads is use a needle but the needle's hole must be big enough for the elastic string to pass through, and at the same time, the needle must be thin enough to fit through the bead! So ultimately some beads can't be used with elastic string.
In general, there is only enough room in small seed beads for an elastic string to pass through once. So in this design I planned it so the seed beads only get passed through once, whereas the larger false pearls get passed through several times. If you have already passed an elastic string through a bead at least once, and you are having trouble passing it through again, one trick is to pull the elastic string going through it tight so it's thinner. This leaves more room in the lumen of the bead.
One final note about this pattern is that it can be done with fishing line as well, but the conveniences that elastic string bring to it are the lack of a need for either a clasp or needing to make the bracelet large enough to fit over the hand. If you're a first-timer though, fishing line will be MUCH easier to use to practice with.
Step 2:For this bracelet, you will need a somewhat large set of stones (as you can see from my samples of bracelets done in this pattern in the jewelry page, you can use any size of large bead from medium to very large). You can use a variety of materials as well... either false (or real!) pearls as I used, or Tiger's eye, or anything else you can think of (rose quartz maybe?). You will also need some medium sized beads (about a fifth the size of the large beads). I used smaller false pearls for this. Finally you will need even smaller beads. I used small seed beads as my "small beads" when I used medium sized pearls as the "large beads". I used short bugle beads as my "small beads" when I used very large false pearls as my "large beads". You will also need about 3 metres of 0.5mm elastic string and a needle will come in handy.
So, begin by stringing 2 medium-sized beads, followed by a large bead, followed by another 2 medium-sized beads on the elastic string. I've labelled the large one with a blue dot and will consistently label this same exact bead blue throughout the pattern to orient you.
Step 3:Now add another large bead and cross it with both ends of the elastic string/fishing line as shown in the picture.
Step 4:Now pull the elastic string tight and add 3 "small" beads to each end of the elastic string. Add one medium-sized bead to one end of the elastic string so that you can cross it with the other end in the next step. Now be sure to keep track of the colours of my arrows because I will be consistent in making sure I always indicate where the same ends of elastic string are going.
A word about how tight to pull the elastic string. I say pull as tight as you can but then let the strings take back some slack on their own after you've pulled. You'll get a feel for it, but in general don't let them remain in a stretched state or else they won't be stretchy when you're trying to put the bracelet on. You want them to be tight but not stretched.
Step 5:This step is fairly simple. Just cross the medium-sized bead with the other end of the elastic string. Notice the order of the arrows has switched because the strings have switched places by crossing the bead.
