Wire doodle bracelet

Last night at the Loose Bead Society program we did a hands-on "wire doodle bracelet" project.  We were each given a leather bracelet blank and brightly colored wire.  The instructions showed how to make a clasp out of wire (which is great for those of us with larger wrists), how to make a number of "doodles", and how to attach them to the bracelet without making more holes.  Basically, we bent the wire into different shapes using pliers and our hands then wrapped the wire around the leather.

After doing the clasp, I made a purple flower (because purple) and put a red swirl on top for the center.  I made a lot of swirls - they were easy - but I also made a few balls, which also were easy and gave this abstract piece some dimension.  I made a few leaves for the flower, and before I knew it, I had practically the whole bracelet covered:

I could still add a little something over there on the right by the clasp.  I had left it open because I didn't want to mess with the clasp mechanism, but another swirl or two wouldn't interfere.

Yes, it looks like a jumble, but I kinda like it.  It's more comfortable to wear than I thought it would be, and there's so much to look at.

The part I liked best about making it was figuring out how to anchor things so they wouldn't stick up.  For the leaves I took a piece of red wire and went through the spiral then diagonally across one of the leaves to hold it down.  In a few places, such as the center of the flower, I threaded the wire through a few of the spirals then wrapped it around the bracelet again.  Here is the non-clasp end of the bracelet with two examples of that:

It was tricky to not kink the wire while threading it through a spiral, but I managed.  The doodle on the right has a black ball in the center of the purple spiral, and it sticks up about a quarter of an inch.

Here's my favorite part of the bracelet:

It's a little ball with the wire wrapped around one and a half times with little spirals on each end.  If I were to do another of these bracelets, I'd like to just have a number of this kind of doodle in different colors.

This was fun, even though my fingers were sore afterward.  I rely on them too much when working with wire.

I think this would be a great project for kids.  A number of people wrote their name in wire, so that would be fun for kids to figure out how to do it and how to attach it to the bracelet.