New Item Prototype: DNA Bracelet

I've been wanting to try chainmaille forever. I kept on putting it off in the states because I worked at a bead store and couldn't help constantly replenishing my bead stock with new and wonderful stones to play with. But now that I'm in Stockholm, I have yet to find a good brick-and-mortar bead store. This means that I'm not replenishing my bead stock quite as quickly, whereas my supply of jump rings has more or less remained steady. (Makes sense, since I buy them in large quantities and you really only need 2, maybe 4 at most for your typical beaded piece.)

These are jump rings, for those whose interests do not include jewelry-making.

Necessity is the mother of invention, or in this case, experimentation, and lately my attention has been directed less towards beads and more towards chainmaille: the art of interlocking jump rings to create a wide variety of projects: clothing and armor, chains for larger projects, standalone pieces, and more. It's not just for SCA and Ren Faire enthusiasts!

I have a couple ideas regarding chainmaille that I want to try out. Some of them will have to wait until I get different rings, but I did manage to get one project done: a double helix DNA bracelet!

Hopefully the resemblance between this (a weave called This Is Not Food) and DNA is easy enough to see here; my small jump rings may be a touch too large (or my large jump rings not large enough). It definitely looks nicer in real life. I should have spent more time on staging the photos so you can get a better idea of how it "really" looks but I was too impatient!

Overall I'm quite pleased with how it came out. There are a lot of different spiral weaves available but there aren't a lot that have the shape I'm going for. The only other one I could find is the 4 in 1 Spiral, but it's hard to get it to maintain its spiral shape. This Is Not Food, on the other hand, maintains its spiral shape naturally. This one was the learning piece, so I won't be selling it, but I expect to crank out a few more right away. Unlike beaded jewelry, chainmaille jewelry has a lot of potential for the men's/unisex niche, so I'm excited to be able to add this skill to my repertoire!