Coffee, Chaos & Heishi Beads: Creating Gilmore Girls Inspired Bracelet Stacks

Apparently all it takes to send me straight back to Stars Hollow is a box of heishi beads and the realization that burgundy, navy, cream and gold look suspiciously like they belong somewhere between Chilton and Luke’s Diner.

And so began the Gilmore Girls bracelets.

I originally made these stacks for the shop, and judging by how popular they’ve been, I am clearly not the only person who still wants to spend an unreasonable amount of time in Stars Hollow. Honestly, give me a cup of coffee, a town meeting I have absolutely no business attending, and a front-row seat for whatever nonsense Kirk is doing this week, and I'm good.

But these bracelets also turned into a really fun lesson in creating themed bracelet stacks — because a themed bracelet doesn't have to have the theme written across every single bead.

Building a Theme Without Beating It to Death

When I'm creating a four-bracelet Stack, I like the bracelets to work together even if you don't immediately recognize the reference.

For these, the colour palette did a lot of the work.

I pulled burgundy, navy, cream, white, muted neutrals and little touches of gold. Together they have that slightly preppy, collegiate feeling that works perfectly for Chilton and Rory, while still feeling warm and cozy enough for Stars Hollow.

Then come the words.

And this is where themed bracelets get fun.

Instead of putting Gilmore Girls across a bracelet and calling it a day, I started pulling out the little references that fans actually recognize:

RORY. LORELAI. CHILTON. LUKE'S. COFFEE. NO CELL PHONES.

That last one may be my favourite.

The No Cell Phones sign is a fixture in Luke's Diner, and Luke spends years trying — with varying degrees of success — to enforce it. Lorelai, naturally, treats Luke's rules more like gentle suggestions. At one point Luke even takes a phone and announces, “No cell phones in the diner.” Very Luke. Very Stars Hollow.

That's the kind of reference I love using because someone unfamiliar with the show might simply see a funny bracelet.

A Gilmore Girls fan sees it and immediately knows.

The Secret to a Good Four-Bracelet Stack

This is probably the most useful thing I learned while making these: not every bracelet needs to be the star.

If all four have letters, charms, focal beads and seventeen different ideas fighting for attention, we've essentially created a Stars Hollow town meeting for your wrist.

Nobody needs that.

For a set of four, I generally want:

• one bracelet with the main word or reference,

• one secondary reference or small focal,

• and simpler coordinating bracelets that give the eye somewhere to rest.

Gold spacers and little hearts help connect everything without competing with the letter beads.

It also means you can pull one bracelet out and wear it alone, combine two or three, or pile on all four when you're feeling particularly Lorelai.

Which brings us, inevitably, to coffee.

Coffee Deserves Its Own Bracelet

There was simply no universe in which I could make Gilmore Girls bracelets without COFFEE.

Coffee is woven throughout the series and especially through Lorelai and Rory's visits to Luke's. Lorelai's “coffee-coffee-coffee” moment is particularly perfect: she says it as an exaggerated plea for caffeine, the woman serving her thinks she has ordered three coffees...and Lorelai eventually decides three coffees are fine after all.

I respect this logic completely.

This may also explain why coffee keeps appearing in my craft-room photos.

We'll call it research.

And We're Not Finished Yet...

Naturally, once you start digging through Gilmore Girls references, the situation gets out of hand quickly.

Because now I'm thinking:

TEAM JESS.

Then obviously somebody is going to demand TEAM LOGAN.

And somewhere, quietly standing beside a Volvo and wondering what he did wrong, is Dean.

There could be I SMELL SNOW, Stars Hollow, Dragonfly Inn, Friday Night Dinner, Life & Death Brigade, Yale and plenty of other little references that fans would recognize without turning the bracelets into walking television billboards.

And that's really what I've enjoyed most about these.

They're colourful little bracelets on their own.

But if you know...

you know.

And apparently quite a few of you know, because these have been some very popular little Stacks.

So I suspect my trip to Stars Hollow isn't over yet.

Coffee first.

Then beads.

Obviously.

And now I want to hear from my fellow Stars Hollow fans~

Who’s your favourite Gilmore Girls character — and what quote or phrase from the show still lives rent-free in your head?

Drop it in the comments… you may just inspire the next bracelet.