Beaded Bracelet “Cyprus”

I made all three of these bracelets today…they work up very quickly and are pretty fun to do!

I came across this older post from Madame Bijou for her Cyprus bracelet. It didn’t take much thought to figure it out – she uses what looks like some 6/0 beads in her bracelet, I used some cubes to make the brick stitch triangles because I have so very, very many of them.

Make a brick stitch triangle with 7 cubes or beads on the bottom row, working up to two in the top row. Coming out of one of the two top cubes, make a loop of six 11/0 seeds to connect your jump ring and go back through the other top cube. Work the thread back down through the triangle and exit the first cube of the bottom seven.

Add your first row of beads – use bigger and different sized and colored beads, separated by two, three, or four 11/0 seeds. You will need to measure your clasp, and the size of your triangle. Add together the clasp size and the triangle size times two to figure out how long to make your connecting string of beads. I made some a bit longer than others (just a teeny bit) so that some of the strands overlapped – but you could make them all the same size if you want.

When you have your length of beads, start making the other triangle. Make a ladder stitch of seven cubes.

So make the other triangle, adding another loop of six seeds at the top to connect the other side of the clasp. Weave the thread back down the other side and come out at the end cube on the opposite side of where your bead string is.

Like this! Now just fill in the center five cubes going back and forth. I used about ten to fifteen seeds to begin and end each bead strand, and worked the bigger beads in to the middles. When you get to the end of a bead string, just go up into the cube you end at and come down out of the cube next door.

It’s really easy, and I love anything that uses up bead soup beads. The first one I made had silver cubes, black 8/0 seeds, and some assorted bicones and confetti glass beads. I made it a bit too short so I had to use a HUGE clasp.

Second bracelet used a blue colored mix of cubes, an 11/0 Czech seed bead mix called “ghostly apparition”, bicones and blue cats eye beads.

And the third bracelet used a white, silver, grey cube mix, the same Czech seeds, and some black and silver beads along with red cubes and red bicones. Again I messed up and made too short, so luckily I had another huge clasp on hand. These bracelets look quite fancy, but were really easy to make. I am still working on my bead weaving skills, so doing the brick stitch triangles with those big old cubes was great practice for me.