The Cellini Spiral Disaster

I've decided to tell the tale of the cellini spiral disaster I keep alluding to.  It happened last Christmas.  I saw a cellini spiral bracelet somewhere on the internet and decided it was a great idea to make one for each of my aunts.  To be sure I could pull it off, I made a first try/sample.  It looked like this:

Since this one came out pretty well, I decided to pull the trigger and buy all the supplies I needed for the rest of the bracelets.

Supplies:

• 1 tube 15/0 round beads
• 1 tube 11/0 round beads
• 1 tube 3mm Magatamas or 8/0 round beads
• Fire line
• Big eye needle

Click here to find the tutorial I used to learn how to make these.  I used smaller beads than suggested because I wanted the bracelets to be thinner.  After many, many hours of beading, I came up with this:

At this point, you're probably thinking that they look pretty good.  Well, I did too.  It wasn't until I tried to finish them off that I realized there was a major issue:  tension.  Since I'm a perfectionist, I made each bracelet as tight as possible.  This was bad news when I tried to bend them to add a clasp.  The smallest beads busted leaving tiny holes in the bracelets!  I tried to fix them, but it was no use.  I'd add a bead to fix a hole, bend it again to attach a clasp, and a small bead somewhere else would bust.  Talk about infuriating.

Obviously, these bracelets did not end up being given as gifts since I couldn't get them to actual bracelet form.  They currently reside in a bag on my craft table because I can barely stand to look at them after how much effort and how many hours I put into them just to have this happen.  Perhaps one day I'll turn them into Christmas ornaments.  Either way, please learn from my mistake.  Don't make your beading so tight that it busts and maybe even use bigger beads.  I'm sticking with chainmaille from now on.  Jump rings are lots easier to fix when something goes wrong.