If you're into beads at all, you probably have a fairly large jar or box or gasp! boxes of beads you've bought that you haven't found a use for yet. I'm guilty of this and have started using my stashes of interesting beads for things like cell phone charms, charms that people like to dangle from their ID badges, or key rings, and charm bracelets. If you've got sterling silver or plated chain, you have a head start, but I don't always have chain on hand, so I occasionally make myself a bracelet from jumprings, preferably sterling, but plated will do too. The simplest bracelet is just a string of jumprings, but I often make a strand of doubled jumprings (just attatch two jumprings to two others and make a long strand in the same manner). But for this project, I just went with the one ring strand of sterling jumprings type bracelet.
Jumprings can be frustrating. You think they're well and truly 'closed' and they pop open at the most inopportune times. The purist might decide to solder them closed after making the bracelet, and I've just invested in a mini torch and plan to try just that, but for today, my bracelet is hanging together nicely with just manual closure of the jumprings. Try to close the rings so you feel the 'click' as the two ends pass across each other when closing.
Once you have the length of homemade chain you want (I tend to make bracelets about 6 1/2 inches long, including the clasp), it's time to start making charms. I like to mix commercial cast charms with charms I make from my mega stash of 'interesting' beads. It wasn't hard to find enough Halloween type themed beads for this bracelet, since I'm drawn to this sort of thing.
Making headpin charms is fairly straightforward, you just mount your bead on a headpin (I don't limit myself to silver headpins for what I call funky charm bracelets...I like mixing my metals for a bit of interest). I like to put a small bottom bead on next to the 'head' of the headpin, then my focal bead, then another small bead. Then just grasp the headpin with your needlenose pliers, right up against the last small bead added, and bend the headpin at a 90 degree angle. Then shift the needlenose pliers so you have the bend under the bottom 'needle' and bend the headpin up and over the top 'needle', making the loop. Then I like to re grasp the loop so that the bit of headpin that forms the neck of the loop is visible, and wrap the headpin end around the neck of the headpin to make the nice coiled look under the loop. Clip the end close to the headpin and snug the clipped end down so it's not too obvious.
I like to do a bit of an assembly line approach and just work up a bunch of charms at once, especially if I'm making a themed type bracelet. Here's my original collection of basic charms for this bracelet.
Once I have my charms made and gathered, I attach them to the charm bracelet with smaller jumprings, attach a clasp and I'm done! On this bracelet you'll see commercial charms, interesting lampwork beads, the skulls and bones are ceramic beads from Peru, the eye beads are, I believe, from India.
