Boden Inspried Flowers and Tubes Bracelet, originally posted at Tatertots and Jello

Hey there everybody!  My name is Lei.  I come from a land called My Many Colored Days.   I'm a mom to 4 colorful children and I live a wildly colorful life... I love running, reading, writing, mothering, creating, photographing, baking, teaching, yoga and playing the violin/viola.  Not all at once though -  haha!  I am really excited to be here at Jen's place today sharing this fun tutorial with you.  Hope you have a ton of fun with it! My inspiration for this project came from a necklace I saw in the Boden USA catalog (photo below). Boden is a collection of clothing and accessories which I love... but is too pricey for me.  Since it was love at first sight with this necklace, I knew I needed to tried to try and recreate a likeness of it for myself  - but for much less money! 
My inspiration for this project came from a necklace I saw in the Boden USA catalog (photo below). Boden is a collection of clothing and accessories which I love... but is too pricey for me.  Since it was love at first sight with this necklace, I knew I needed to tried to try and recreate a likeness of it for myself  - but for much less money!

Here is how I switched it up and made it my own.  I went with a bracelet rather than a necklace, and mixed and matched the fabrics to make it a little funkier.  I loved the gray color scheme, so I stuck with that.  But I will definitely be trying this with some more colorful fabrics as well!  Heaven knows I love me some color.

Here's what I used:

snippets of ribbon and fabric - for the tubes, about 2 in. long, and varying widths

needle/thread

hot glue

ribbon and fabric for the flowers, 8-10 in. long

buttons

chain link bracelet to attach the tubes to

And here is what I did.  First, I formed the tubes.  I rolled about 2 in. of both fabric and ribbon for mine.  

*Note: the fabric was easier to work with and the tubes came out a little cleaner.*  To secure the tubes I used hot glue.  (Fabric glue takes too long to dry.)  I suspect that Boden stitched their's (you can sort of see a stitch in the center of their tubes).  But because I wanted a true tube I chose to hot glue mine.  If you go this route, do not hot glue right on the edge of your ribbon, leave a bit of a tail - like this:

And here's why :  as you continue to roll the tube closed the glue will ooze outward giving you a more secure seal.  If you don't leave a tail, the hot glue will leave a sloppy, goopy looking seal.

(Geez, is everyone's hot glue gun as grody as mine is?  It is definitely not in picture form!  Lol.)

After I formed my tubes and decided which pattern I wanted them in, I formed the flowers.  Again, I used both ribbon and fabric for a more eclectic look.  I love the finished edge of ribbon for flowers and corsages.  But a ragged, shabby edge is fun too!  If you don't know how to make these flowers, here is a quick review.  

Stitch along one side of the ribbon or flower, like so:

As you go, cinch the ribbon/fabric to form pleats or ruffles:

When your flower has reached the fullness you would like, stitch it closed to form a circle.  And voila, a flower.  Once the flowers were formed, I hot glued a button to the center of each of them (I made 3).  

The final step is to assemble the bracelet.  Again there are a few ways you could do this.  I happened to have a very plain and simple chain link bracelet that I never wear.  So I threaded my tubes together (staggering them a bit for fun) and attached the string of tubes to the bracelet... a few stitches every couple of links reinforced with a dab of more hot glue.  You could just thread them together and attach some kind of closure or make a ribbon tie like our original.  Since it's kind of a chunky bracelet, I didn't make the ribbon closure (even though I love it!).  I just thought it might be too much. 

Here is a photo of the back of my bracelet so you can get an idea of what I did:

You could also thread the flowers between the tubes.  I mounted mine on top of the tubes with, you guessed it, hot glue. :D

And here is the finished product!

Aren't those tubes cool lookin'?  I love them!  Many a fun project could be made using tubes... ;)

Thanks so much Jen for letting me share.  I love getting ideas from others as well!  So please stop by My Many Colored Days sometime and say hi so I can come see your fun projects as well!