I decided to use these as attempts to either practice making better joints for the crocheted tubes or trying out other ways of making them. I even tried to try the idea of putting a bead on a headpin and enclosing it inside the tube. This did not work well as the bead tended to slip out of the tubing no matter how tight I gathered up the last row. I did try running a head pin through a couple of the last beads and was very glad to have a wire making the connection with the clasp. Because the headpin comes through the regular beads it does not exit exactly in the middle and even bending it did not keep it centered very well.

With my last tube, I tried sewing bead caps over the ends and butting those together. That seems to work the best for me. However, now I want to try putting a large stone bead where the bead caps meet, with maybe a tiny metal bead on each side of the stone. I want to try this today. Made a couple of new tubes to try it out and felt I had made the tubes too long. Adding the stone bead makes the bracelet way too long. So today I want to try making a shorter tube and am eager to look through my stone collections to see what I have. What a marvelous way to use up those leftover stones!