Birthday Bracelet 1 - Petunia Bracelet

• 15/0 seed beads Miyuki "Metallic Brown Iris" (458)
• 11/0 seed beads Toho "Gilded Marble Black" (1706)
• 6mm 2-hole cabochon beads "Chalk Blue Luster"
• 4mm druks "Opaque Green Luster"
• 4mm druks "Metallic Amethyst Luster"
• O-Beads "Opaque Blue Luster"

My birthday was on Thursday and Teejay sent me a package full of beady goodies. Besides a lot of gorgeous beads in some of my favorite colors, she also sent eight beautiful bracelets that are her original designs created just for me. Starting with today's post, I will blog about one of the bracelets each day and tell you what beads she used to make it. Our plan is to eventually create patterns for them so that everyone can make them. I can't tell you how soon I will post the patterns because I still have other patterns that are in the works and stupid things like housework keep interfering with my beading creativity. I also have jury duty coming up in May but I'm hoping that I won't get chosen to be on a jury. Even that wouldn't necessarily mean that it won't take a lot of my time because the last time I got a summons a couple years ago, it took three days of having to go to court before they determined that they didn't want me on the jury.

As you'll see, I've given each of the bracelets a name and this time I went with a flower and plant theme. Some of the bracelets are actually the same design but Teejay used different main beads in a couple of them or they're variations. I know that you're going to like them all.

Today's bracelet is one of a kind and it features the new 6mm 2-hole cabochons along with lots of O-Beads and druks. As you will see over the next week or so, Teejay used O-Beads in all but one of the bracelets. My only experience with O-Beads has been with Puca's "Rani Bracelet" pattern, which I blogged about HERE and in a few other posts (use the search box on the right to find them). I have bought a few colors of O-Beads just for making that pattern because I really had no other ideas for using them. Now Teejay has given me lots of ideas for ways to use them and she also sent me some O-Beads in my birthday package.