With Valentine's Day coming up way too fast, you might be wondering if you still have time to pull together a thematic piece of jewelry. Fortunately, the hearts-and-romance theme of Valentine's Day is easy to find all year round in jewelry supplies because jewelry by its very nature tends to be a romantic gift. Hearts and cupids abound. Red and pink are popular colors. In fact, you don't have to wait until Valentine's Day to make a romantic looking charm bracelet. You can assemble this particular one any time you'd like.
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First, pull out all your jewelry supplies and have a look at what you have on hand. I went straight for red and pink beads and silver and gold findings. To me, red looks richly classic with gold. Pink is more delicate. It complements the pale, subtle tones of silver.
In the second photo to your right, I have (going clockwise):
a gold-tone locket,
a complicated gold-tone link chain bracelet,
translucent, faceted, red plastic beads
three opaque red plastic beads and one opaque red plastic pony-bead
translucent, teardrop shape, red, glass beadsa simple silver-plated link chain bracelet
translucent, deep rose, heart-shaped, rose quartz beads
translucent, icy-pale-pink, square, glass beads
I decided to embrace traditionalism and go with the red and gold. I put aside the silver and pink stuff, and looked at the red and gold that I had left. I wanted to get some design ideas. Two things occurred to me. One, I don't have a lot of time to put this charm bracelet together.
Two, my supplies are a bit on the "shabby chic" side. To put it bluntly, all my stuff is gold-tone and plastic rather than real gold and semi-precious stones. Therefore, I knew the resulting charm bracelet is going to look more thrift shop than upscale-jeweler. That's totally okay. However, it did make me decide against the less-sophisticated look of the opaque beads. I evaluated the two types of translucent red beads that I had left. The teardrop glass ones looked fancier than the faceted plastic ones.
I decided to keep the bracelet simple with only one type of bead. Not only does this save time, but it also minimizes the trashy look that a mixture of cheap supplies can convey. The complicated double-link style of the gold-tone chain bracelet worked in my favor in that it already looked ornamental. I didn't have to add much other than some beads. Had I gone with the silver, single-link bracelet, I would have had to add a lot of beads and charms to keep the simple chain from looking too bare. I considered adding some complicated beads on headpins to the charm bracelet as long dangling elements. However, it all seemed too fussy, especially given the inherent cheap look of my supplies so I kept it simple. In the end, the charm bracelet supplies came down to the following.
Time of Project: About an hour.
Technical knowledge: Nothing
Materials: (all available on Etsy.com or eBay.com or your local crafts store)- Gold-tone link chain bracelet
- Gold-tone, large, heart-shaped locket
- Gold-tone, medium-sized, puffed heart charm
- 10 or 12 translucent red glass teardrop shaped glass beads to attach along the chain link bracelet at even intervals. I ended up using 11.
- 20 or 24 gold-tone jump rings (this total will be double the total of beads you end up using) plus one each for the locket and smaller puffed heart charm
- Tools: jewelry pliers, chain nose
- Tools: jewelry pliers, round nose
Step 1. Open all your jump rings. Use your chain nose pliers and round nose pliers to open your total jump rings. Remember to grip each side of your jump ring and separate the ends by moving one end towards you and one end away from you. This motion is similar to tearing a piece of paper. Don't pull the ends straight back to the sides or you'll stretch the jump ring out of shape. In the fourth photo to your right, I'm looking down on the ring and pulling the left side towards me while pushing the right side away. However, you can see that the ends would still touch if I were to move them back into the same plane. This is what you want.
Step 2. Connect the jump rings to the beads. String each red translucent bead with an open jump ring and use your pliers to close the jump ring (that is, move the ends of each jump ring back where they were so that they touch). Step 3. Connect the beads to the chain link bracelet. Use the rest of the jump rings to connect each bead-on-a-jump-ring to the chain link bracelet. Thread the second jump ring through the first jump ring and then pass the open end of the second jump ring through a link on the chain bracelet. You're using a double set of jump rings to attach each bead to a link on the chain bracelet. You could just use a single jump ring to attach each bead. However, using two jump rings gives the beads more mobility to hang like a fringe of beads. Attach them in evenly spaced intervals on the chain link bracelet. I attached mine to every other link. In the photo to your right, you can see from the close-up of the translucent beads how gorgeous they are – like pomegranate seeds.
Step 4. Attach the locket and smaller puffed heart charm. Use gold-tone jump rings to attach the locket to a link near the clasp of the bracelet and the smaller puffed heart charm to a link at the midpoint of the bracelet. That is really all the ornamentation you need for a bracelet as simple as this one. This finishes the project! Put it on your wrist and enjoy.
