Hands that do dishes...

I wish I had nice elegant hands, but I don't. I have hands that repair vacuum pumps, tweak machines and clean out rabbit hutches. I can see four scars just as I'm typing this - the three long ones were down to me breaking NMR tubes at work and the fourth was due to an incident with an angry chicken (honestly, that is true!). I have short fingers, a touch of ecxema (thanks to a combination of spending hours everyday with gloves on and the solvents we handle at work) and I bite my nails. They're not ugly hands, they are just *practical* hands; hands that work rather than hands wot lunch.

It's because of this I don't wear rings or nail polish. Or anything really that draws attention to them. Which is a shame as I see so many really lovely rings - but I just know they wouldn't suit me, I'd spend ages fiddling nervously with them or I'd get annoyed with them catching on things.

Despite this, my craft box contains a number of ring blanks. Quite a large number in fact. Most of them have pierced fronts and adjustable backs.



As my Prague beads are still spread over every surface, I figured beads might be the way to go here.



Blue beads - blue cord :) I'd say it was a highly considered colour choice inspired by one of my many muses, but it's more to do with the fact that my craft boxes are in disarray at the moment, so I pulled out the first matching pair. It was a little like those maths problems you used to get at school where you had to calculate the number of time you had to select a sock from a drawer in order to get a pair.



Threading through the first hole actually proved easier to hold in place if I wore the ring to support it.





Four regularly spaced leaves round the outside...



..and some random beads in the centre to add a little bit of height.



These little flower beads need threading in a different way as the hole is in the centre. Thread goes through the flower, through a seed bead then back through the flower to hold it upright.





Repeat until bored :)





Final product - upgraded from the dark of my craft box to the dark of my jewellery box. Maybe one day I'll be brave enough to wear it outside.