Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Recycled Crafts Contributor, Anitra from the blog “Coffee Pot People”. 

Do you ever just feel creatively uninspired? Me, too. When that happens, nothing gets my juices flowing like browsing through beading supplies, whether it’s in person, with a catalog, or online. I especially love Blue Moon beads-so much pretty for such a small thing!

The other day I came across a new (to me, anyway) jewelry finding-a bangle bracelet with knob on each end that unscrewed to let you slide on whatever additional elements you chose. I had to play with them. (And that’s another way to spark creativity, isn’t it? Just sit with your materials and play.)

I’ll spare you the couple that purely did not work, but show you five that did:

I began by seeing what each chain would look like, using different sizes and metals, and threading it on in different ways:

Hard to choose a favorite, but I really like that gold on silver!

Then I thought I’d try putting together something a bit over-the-top glitzy. I dug through my broken jewelry stash, and came up with two pendants without necklaces, two single earrings, and a broken pin. Perfect.

I created a wire-wrapped loop connector for each of them. The pendants were easy, since they both had loops to attach my wire. The earrings, I took my round-nose pliers and bent the post into a loop. The pin took more ingenuity, but wire and pliers did the trick.

Once I’d done that, I threaded the newly-created dangles on. Not great. When I put the bracelet on, all the dangles swooped to the downward side of my wrist. To counter that, I took a length of silver wire, curled a tiny loop on one end to eliminate the sharp point, and wound it around the bracelet in a spiral, adding dangles as I went. Nylon-jawed pliers held the wire in place without marring either it or the bracelet.

Broken jewelry lives again!

As I worked on the bracelets, a pile of mother-of-pearl beads caught my eye. I’d peeled them off a set of coasters I found in a thrift store. The coasters were kind of cool, but awfully permeable looking. The beads, though…!

So that was my last bracelet experiment. Using two silver jump rings for each bead, one to go through the top hole, and one to go around the bracelet’s shank, I filled the bracelet. It’s my favorite:

Best thing: The way these bracelet “bases” are made, a new bracelet is as easy as taking the knob off again, sliding off the old, and sliding on the new!

Related posts:

• Headbands in Bloom
• High-Fashion Friendship Bracelets
• Scrap Pile Project: Making a Headband
• How to Create Rexlace Bracelets
• Zip Up a Flower