= 2020.11.21 - Holiday Bracelet Upcycle Project!

As an adhd brain in a body being pummeled by physical training a fair bit, epsom salt baths are good, but boring. So I have developed a splurge habit of using bath bombs to make them more fun. The particular brand of bath bombs I favor always have a little toy or charm inside them, and I really enjoy finding out what they are going to be, and I enjoy creating small displays of many of the toys.

Last December, I received a 'advent calendar' of these bath bombs as a gift. Nearly every bomb had a small Christmas or Winter themed charm inside it. They are adorible, but not really very me at all. However, it occured to me that my grandmother would love a bracelet made with them. So after lovely soaks, I'd toss each new charm into a small pile, with that vague plan in mind.

I don't go through many bath bombs per month (it's a splurge, I stick to about one a week), and I'm not a big fan of having tight deadlines on projects of my own design, so I didn't even try to manage that before Christmas last year. So that small pile, which was later moved to a small plastic bag, has been sitting around all year.

I decided that this month I needed to either put this together and send it, or donate the charms to someone who would use them. So I started hunting for chain to string them together on. I thought I might be able to use some craft chain I'd had in a box for ages, but it didn't fit. After thinking a bit about the various kinds of charm bracelets, I realized I didn't need a chain at all. I could use yarn, or ribbon, so long as I had it in nice colours to match, and I could braid it, which could still easily keep charms on jump rings at nice intervals along it. So I went digging through my supplies. No yarn, no bright colours of ribbon.. but.. white parachord innerds??

Several years ago I tried my hand at whip making, and one of the tricks to getting parachord to lay flat when it's plaited, is to empty it of the reinforcement threads from its center. These threads conveniently can be made into poppers, the thin/fluffy attachments that create the air pocket that makes the 'crack' sound. As I never learned more than the basics of performance whip cracking, I have quite a lot of the stuff left over.

=> parachordBag.jpg My bag o' parachord innerds

So I braided three strands of the stuff together, and attached the charms, and voila! A cute little charm bracelet, which turned out even nicer than I'd imagined.

=> finishedBracelet.jpg Pic of the finished bracelet

I'm really happy about it, now all that's left is to wrap it up, but that in a box and send it. .. and not put this on the http site till Christmas :)