Trying something new - Making Woolywire beads

I think I have mentioned before about the greatest jewelry group on Facebook called Creative Bead Chat (CBC). We share tons of creative ideas, tips and tricks. It's a great place for jewelry designers to be.

One day, CBC member Sandra McGriff posted a giveaway - she had been gifted beads and Woolywire from another CBC member and hadn't gotten around to using it, so she decided to give it away to someone in the group. And guess what, I won!

Woolywire is a product available from yet another CBC member Karen Totten (Etsy shop Starry Road Studio). According to the product description on Etsy, Woolywire is "fiber that has been hand dyed and hand spun onto 24ga solid copper wire can be shaped, twisted, coiled, wrapped, woven through chain, for your jewelry creations. It has been permanently felted to keep fiber fixed to the wire."

I received 3 feet of Woolywire in a mix of blacks and pinks plus 3 ceramic beads - two wavy tube pink beads and one black leaf bead. The curl of the wire in the package made me instantly think of making a Memory Wire bracelet.

I like to make chunky bracelets with Memory Wire, so I went to the stash and started pulling out all the pinks medium sized and a little larger. I did purchase one strand of purple, pink and pale yellow crinkle glass nuggets to tie it together, but the rest came from my stash (hooray). I ended up with 4 rounds of beads.

My original thought was to weave the Woolywire through the entire bracelet - a twist here, loop around a few beads, twist again, etc. etc. But I had made the bracelet too long for that plan! Plan B: cut the wire in fourths and make Woolywire beads.

Woolywire bead!

The Woolywire comes with detailed instructions on how to cut finish the ends, right on the packaging materials. I followed them to materials. I followed them to a T and it worked perfectly.

Instructions included

So here is the finished bracelet. I am very happy with how the beads and the bracelet turned out. I still want to try out the original plan of weaving the Woolywire throughout a bracelet, so I see another purchase in my future....

I am including a link so you can check out the bracelet in my Etsy shop.