A Beaded Bracelet

I recently visited a bead store in another town and they carried completed kits for different items.  They had a lot of beautiful bracelets and necklaces to choose from.  I'm not much of a bracelet person but I couldn't rip myself away from this particular kit I bought called The Colors of Spring.  It was really pretty and I wanted to know how to do the technique they used on it.

I asked the ladies at the bead store if the instructions were for beginners.  I have never attempted what I was about to attempt and I wanted to make sure I could do it.  They assured me that the instructions were written for beginners.  Ha!  They were wrong.  I opened the instructions and had practically no idea what they were talking about.  End closures?  Bicones?  Fireline?  What?  Well, I just got started very slowly and it seemed to make sense as I went.  I'm just glad that I have some sense of crafting or I probably would have gotten lost.  Here's the beginning of the stringing:

Here you can see the pattern emerging.  I put a lot of faith in those instructions and it seemed like it was working out.  You may not be able to tell, but the beads are a true, beautiful purple.
 

Here I have finished the first pattern for the bracelet.  It's pretty like this, but the pattern had some more details to add.

Here I am at the end of my "rope."  You can see the detail above the flowers that makes it even more pretty.  The original bracelet had twelve flowers but that would've been way too long for my wrist, so I just did ten.  I wish I had done eight.

At this point I had no idea what to do.  The pattern said I should "weave in any loose threads and ENJOY!!"  I noticed a few things however: there were no closures and I thought, 'well, I guess I could twist tie it together.  Also,  I had about a yard and a half of extra fireline on each needle.  She could not possibly mean that I was to weave another three yards through all those beads.  And I was confused how the whole thing wouldn't fall apart if I just snipped the threads.  So I had to make a call, and then another call, and then another call.  Finally, I got ahold of the woman who had created the pattern and she gave me some tips about ending the bracelet.  I finished it today.

When I put this around my wrist, it was way too big.  So I ended up moving the closures in past the big purple bicone.  It looks a little silly from the inside, but the outside part looks great when on my wrist.

And because I didn't use all the beads, I was able to make a matching pair of earrings too.  I wish you could see how awesome the purple color is but, oh well.  You can imagine it I guess.