There's Nothing Wrong With Just a Taste of What You Paid For

My first attempt at creating something was a complete disaster. I forgot to purchase earring hooks so I just decided to bead a bracelet, using some stretchy clear beading cord I bought at Urban Source. There, I bought various types of stringing materials (the stretchy cord, metal jewelry wire, and hemp cord) as well as a bag of assorted beads; in addition, I bought other random items such as miniature clothespins to use as bead stops (they're very useful). Then at Michael's, I bought a little assorted tin of lobster clasps, jump rings, and crimp beads, as well as a small set of pliers that has three uses: roundnose pliers, wire gripping, and wire cutting.

They were all I could get in my immediate budget, and the quality shows: I have not gotten around to using the pliers yet, but as I test it out in my hand, it feels quite flimsy. The beads have uneven ends, with one side sometimes being partially closed over. This made it incredibly difficult to do second, third, and sometimes fourth loops...in fact, most of the beads didn't have big enough holes to do all the relooping found in the beading patterns I looked at. A lot of the tutorials seem to be using special needles that make it easy to string your cord through beads, but since I could not find them, I just had to use my fingers. As you can imagine, this took up quite a bit of time.

Next was to look at beading patterns, but every tutorial I found and attempted ended up being too confusing, as the written instructions were either too vague, not even given, or written in a different language. Finally, I found one that seemed slightly doable (at least the first part), even though the written instructions were in French (I felt my way through it with the pictures).

I set to work, but do to my shaky fingers, multiple mistakes that forced me to start over, and forgetting to cut a piece of cord long enough to make up for all the reloops, I ended up with a bracelet that is so small it would only fit a baby...but at least I got the pattern down. P.S. this took nearly three hours...

Added June 5:

beads bought (in bulk)

the rounded part at the top is ok, but notice how the wire cutting part does not completely close.

comparison of the "bracelet" to my hand

simple lobster clas/jump ring is used

Laid out flat...the blue part is supposed to be flowers, but the middle one for some reason is flipped to the other side.

Here is a picture of the bracelet flipped over.