Tie One On

I love men's ties. My dad is a farmer and I do not remember him wearing a tie ever, but I do like ties. Although ties themselves are a little odd...I mean think about it. It is essentially a noose that a guy voluntarily ties around his neck. But on the other hand, they are pretty cool accessories. They are usually beautiful silk, and to me they have so many possibilities.

A lot of people make belts or purses out of ties, and while I do like those ideas, I have no waist and prefer to make purses out of solid colors. On the other hand, I do love bracelets. I have long monkey arms, so I am lucky enough to be able to wear cuff-style bracelets fairly easily.The easiest way for me to get my hands on ties is to get them at the thrift store, so sometimes they have odd smells. The blue one above was apparently worn by a man who wore a LOT of cologne, because even several years later it smells like cologne.
I have basically cut the tie into three pieces. I use the bottom triangular piece to make a simple overlapping cuff with a button and buttonhole, like the first picture and the one below. The finished width of course depends on how wide the tie was initially. The three different ties here vary between 2.5" and 4" wide.I also use the opposite end more or less as is. I cut a piece that is quite a bit longer, and wrap it around 3 times, with either a button or a snap on the end. The one below had a name on the tie, and I debated doing something to cover it up, but in the end, I kind of liked the way it looked, so I left it. Here's another example, wrapped around, and this one has a snap on the end instead of a button. I used heavy duty anorak snaps. Pardon the mess behind me, I was playing with the self timer very late at night and didn't bother editing these before posting them. The center section is a little flexible. I ended up doing something similar with the wrap look, but the number of times it wraps around varies depending on the length of the tie. I just really like the look of the layers. Here it is on my arm.

The last one on here is one of my favorites, but I did struggle quite a lot with how to finish it. I ended up putting medium sized grommets about an inch apart all the way around, but then couldn't figure out how to connect it. I tried several options and wasn't happy with anything, so I finally ended up in the jewelry section of JoAnns and got a chain that I hooked through two of the grommets. Every other bracelet opens up to make it easy to put on (although most of them can be slipped on without opening it up), but this one is sewed down.
I do like the juxtaposition of the chain and grommets against the colors and moderately feminine design, but I struggled with that chain. It took me probably 2 hours to figure out how I wanted to thread it and how to get it to look right when it was on and my hand was moving around. But I'm happy with it.

Thoughts?