Smooches and squishes

Valentine’s Day is a hard theme to do. At least, hard for me. It’s not that I don’t celebrate, I just don’t have many beads that I would typically associate with Valentine’s Day. No pinks. No hearts*. I have red beads, but they are used frequently in other combinations so I can’t quite bring myself to use them in a Valentine’s combo.

Last year’s combination used my dark purples, Love Hurts, and Cherub, but I wasn’t sure how I would switch it up this year.

I had been thinking of doing a hugs and kisses bracelet for a while, but I didn’t think I would get an opportunity to try it this year. There were always so many other beads on my list that buying the letter beads for it never took priority. When my local dealer liquidated their stock and put everything deeply on sale, I went in to take a look. I was worried that they might only have the X and not the O but they had both.

I’ve always liked the styling of the Trollbeads letters, but they are tiny. The X, in particular, is reeealllly tiny. If it hadn’t been so deeply on sale, I never would have bought it. But, I figured that it was time to make good on my idea, so home they came. I knew that I’d have a challenge matching them because of their size, so I started with my tiniest bead, a deep red armadillo. But, as tiny as the armadillo is, it still seemed huge next to the letter beads. My pearls are small enough, but didn’t evoke the right feelings. Then, I remembered seeing the Neverending used on a necklace and thinking how classic it looked. My Neverending hasn’t featured in many of my combinations, but when I started to think about it I realized it was perfect for between the two letters. Simple enough that it doesn’t take away from the letters, but shapely enough to make it interesting.

I left the combination with just the three beads for a day, then added the copper stoppers for a bit of colour. That also opened me up to adding the Æ bead for my children and I Luv U bead for my husband (maybe the next time a dealer is liquidating stock I’ll manage a letter bead for his name ;D) A few days later I remembered that my copper bracelet came with a little “Metal of Love” card, so the copper stoppers seemed especially appropriate.

I usually prefer to have at least one glass bead in a combination so that it has a bit of colour, but I think that the copper stoppers do the trick here. I sometimes wish that I could keep the copper a bit cleaner than they are, but here I think the darker copper sets off the lighter silver nicely.

*I tried to use the heart from the My Sweet Stories bracelet. I really did. But, as you can see, it didn’t make the cut. It’s now in my swap pile – I figure that if I can’t make it work on a Valentine’s Day bracelet, I just can’t make it work.