Craftiness: DIY Morse Code Bracelets

DIY Morse Code Bracelets

I’ve been meaning to put my collection of Miyuki seeds beads to good use. They’ve always been one of those things that I can’t restrain myself from hoarding every time I step inside a bead store. The perfectly uniform, cylindrical beads come in nearly every shade of color imaginable and their itty bitty size make them that much more appealing. I’ve got a thing for anything miniature. So inspired by Sashi’s seed bead bracelets and George Frost’s morse code jewelry, I recently made a handful of mini seed bead bracelets, each encoded with secret little messages.

Because the Miyuki Delica seed beads are super tiny, you’ll need a wire beading needle to help you string the beads onto the embroidery floss. Thread the embroidery floss through the beading needle.

morsecodebracelet3 — You’ll pick 4 colors for each bracelet. A base color, a color for the dots, a color for the dashes and a color separating the dots and dashes. Here I’m using red for the base color, green for the dots, turquoise for the dashes and gold as spacers. Thread on a few base color beads.

Add a spacer bead – in this case, gold. Then spell out the first word with dots (green beads) and dashes (turquoise). Separate each letter with a gold spacer bead. Here I’m spelling out “I LOVE YOU” and the first word is “I” with is translated with just two dots.

morsecodebracelet5 — Add a few more base color beads and translate the next word, which is “LOVE” – and then “YOU” next. Add a few more base color beads.

Thread on a crimp bead. Your crimping pliers have two notches – the first squeezes the tube closed with an indentation along the middle of the bead. The second notch is used to fold the crimp bead into a tube shape. Add another crimp bead onto the other side of the bracelet and crimp it closed.

The closure for the bracelet is simply a tiny small bead, with an opening just big enough to snuggly slide up and down the embroidery floss to tighten. Thread both ends of the embroidery floss through your wire beading needle. Thread on the gold bead – it will be a super tight fit! Crimp on two more crimp beads an inch and half down from the ends of the last seed beads. Trim away any excess and you’re finished!