Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating Charms

My charm bracelets actually use shrink plastic to create the charms this is a really fun way, teo I used to use shrink plastic to get the print of vintage fabric like I would have vintage fabrics and I wanted to put them on the charms and so you can use there's many different brands of shrink plastic the clear that you see here this is actually the kind that you can draw on, so if you're an artist and you want to preserve your work in a charm form you can draw on the clear the white actually goes through the printer. So if you like I had a print or something that you wanted in a charm form you can scan it in and printed out onto these and then for the charms like the round ones I cut them out with I think some of these I cut out with just a trace to circle and I cut them out that you could use uh you know a hole punch a large hole punch and then you bake them and they turn into these really cool little charms and then when these bake you can shine them up with your clear nail polish bu...

t those air really fun so when you see the printed like these floral charms, that is how I made that it's super easy to just follow the directions on the package that you get so the one thing I want to talk about as we make the charms is the type of jump brings that I used the jump a ring is the round loop that holds that you attach to the charm that attach it to the charm bracelet, so usually that is just a regular plane loop. I tried that on the one of the first charm bracelets that I made, and I was leaving where I get my hair cut, and I had a trail of charms on the ground behind me. So then I learned about the split jump rings, and if you can see this, these actually wrap around like a small coil, and so rather than having the two edges of your jump oring meat, it actually continues to wrap around, so you got extra security, so your charm isn't going to come off, so I swear by these now you do need what I was talking about earlier, which is a special pair of pliers, and I'm gonna put that there so that you can get a good look at it because they're kind of oddly shaped, but they're called split, right? Are they called split ring pliers? Yeah, so the way that these work it's pretty simple, actually let's, let's make a charm with one of these, so I've got a hearing here. If I want to make a charm out of maybe just the bottom part of the hearing, I'm going to take my wire cutters, and I'm going to cut off everything but the little loop that's at the top of the hearing really easy to d'oh. So now we have the just the plain charm and to make it to the plane bottom of the hearing, so to make it into and a charm we're going to need to put this jump ring on there and these air a little bit tricky, but if you take the bench part of the plier and you separate the jump ring, it opens up a space for you to slip that hearing or the charm that you've made onto it, and then you just have to slide it on takes a little getting used to and that's why these air so secure? Because when you put it on kind of stays in place, mister, that again, erica. So you're just going to slide it on, and we try that again. I thought I had it. Yeah, very go. So you're going toe coil this on as you keep these separated and really it's easier to use to understand that it is to explain, but what you have almost aren't there we go. So and by the way, these air six millimeter they have larger and smaller but six millimeters seems to work really well for me to create these terms with it's a a big enough hole that it gives you are big enough coil that it gives you variety but what you have left is this is not going anywhere this is stuck on here you don't have to worry about the jump ring separating and I think the reason that my original jump rings separated so much was because I was using silver I think it's a little softer I think base metals actually a little stronger so here we have our first charm created from an earing so let's do another one and I'll see if I can show you I just want to make sure this is on there we go, okay? So there's our first charm so if you would like to make a charm from a coin or something with a flat back, you need something called a bail b a I l to glue it on too and they're different types I have a couple different types here so I can show you what they look like one is a flat bail and one sort of hasn't opened back I used them both, I don't think it's just what a preference, whatever you prefer, but we're going to take one of these flat pieces and create a charm using one of these bales and our glue so I'm going to use the six thousand glue and I think I'm going to use this clear our this open bail here experiment with different ones the main thing is you just wanted to get a really good hold on the back of it you don't want to leave a trail of charms behind you so there I glue that down and I've left the opening at the top above the charm or the cab so that when that dries we can create a charm out of that so we'll let that dry and we'll work on another one so here is another piece this is just I think this came from a necklace there's a lot of little pieces hanging off of it but it's kind of cool if you wanted to break it apart and use the individual pieces so let's do that these create kind of clear charms so you just start cutting its really easy tio kind of cut thes and which tool are using now signing suppliers the I'm sorry the wire cutters flat side so you want to keep the flat side towards thie the piece that you want to use just so you don't cut into it by accident so you were just I'm going to cut a few of these apart and you could loop these together on the same jump ring or you could do them individually but we were making these charm bracelets what I love about them and you can see I put a charm every two or three little rings down the bracelet so in summer big summer small you have to decide what you're comfortable wearing and if it's a bigger charm you just want to make sure they collude really well because that one will get a little more stress than the smaller ones so here have cut like four of them off and let's make another charm with ease do you all wear charm bracelets? Have you ever worn one or do you have one that has special pieces on it or does it the one that I where is primarily just beads um but now I want to make one with trinkets yeah two they are and you can make them special yeah, you know so I've made another charm here that they're making one with two I just I loved her bracelets and like I said, these split jump brings their little fiddly that that's because they're really secure once you get it on there it's not going tio come off although I would say when you're if you wear your charm bracelet regularly check the jump rings once in a while just to make sure everything is ah nice and secure designing what you're going to put together would you put nicer jewelry with more costume jewelry or do you think about the design I do, and I don't normally, um, I wouldn't normally put one nicer piece on a costume piece, but I might do the opposite. I might put, um, on a silver piece, I might put a couple of costume pieces on there because you can change those out in the finish wears out. You can change that out that otherwise it might be it might look, you might have to redo the whole bracelet if he did, like, a cost to, you know, it's just I don't usually combine them that you could there's a rolls I mean, you can do you can I mean, I if I have a silver charm bracelet and I put a subway token on it, I would I that would be something I would do for sure I've put little bits of leather on these. There was a button from actually the button that I put on one of these was like from an old victorian boot that had that buttoned up that I found in an antique storage thought it was interesting, so I bought like, a collection of them and put them on there. So for this one, I've got one of these little charms on it, and I think what I want to do. Rather than put another one of these on, I'm going to put something different on its we'll have two different ones on the same one and this one is a brass finish, but it doesn't matter if you were combining that seems like everybody combines different finishes now anyway, so when I was in high school, my first serious boyfriend bought me a charm bracelet it was an antique store in he saw that I liked it was really so the charms didn't necessarily mean anything to me, but the charm bracelet meant something to me, so it was pretty sweet and since then I just sort of have a soft spot for for charm bracelets very good had ah hole already in it, but what if you wanted tio, add something to your charm bracelets that needed to have a whole put in it? Is there a tool there's a couple things she could dio on? You don't have to put a hole in it you can wrap wire around it and, um you can buy a base metal wire at a craft store and just with your pliers you're literally looping it around and then your looping it around and then you're adding a jump bring to the top so I actually have a problem of project in my book that wraps sea glass and you can also rap like little pieces of driftwood you can use sometimes drift whitest of soft you can use and all and just sort of press a hole into it um but yeah, you always have to put if I had to put a hole in it I would give to my husband because he's got a drill yeah, you need like a little drill bit to put a hole in it and a lot of these costume pieces are not going to lend themselves to hold so you just wrap him and I'll show you how to make one with the head pens as well if there's a hole that goes straight through it perfect now god yeah as you can see there's a reason why these split jeff brings work really well because it just doesn't but they're not super easy to get on so so let's make one with the head pin I'll show you how those work let's find oh I was going this is an easy one to so if you have anti buttons, bakelite buttons, things like that this one has the loop already on it. You would just simply add a jump a ring to that one as well so that was an easy one to so now won't work on these head pens and I'll show you how I do these let's find let's do this one so here's an airing that I don't have a match tio a little ceramic owl it's fun to go commando on he's like jewelry pieces and just cut him up. It's really fun. So when you put ahead pen through anything like this let's just make sure this isn't going to be too big of a hole now, it's kind of big let's try one that has a smaller hole. A jury box here. Well, this'll only use this hearing to demo just perfect. It's funny. My costume jewelry, the glue is never very good, but if you buy a piece of costume jewelry going like it's like a vault it's like something's coming up this has a little bit of glue on and I'm just going to trade it chip off. Okay? America is still a bit big, but we can make it work. So remember those round nosed pliers that I told you about so this's easier than it looks it's going toe look weird, but to use these were gonna bend because the bottom of the head penn is a little small, we're going to make a little loop right above it so that we can hold this in place. So to do that, I'm going to bend the head pen to the right and then with my round pliers, I'm going to make a little loop and the round flyers around because it sort of gives you a nice shape do you going been that into place and you would do that same thing with the wire once you wrap it, you would do the same thing so that's the bottom so now it's going to look like that at the bottom so now we need to make a loop for the jumper and we're going to do the same thing so you turn it at an angle on this is actually really well just go with it so then we're gonna pull this back over and make a nice little loop at the top and now these are my flat needle nose pliers you guys called needle nose pliers? Is that what they're called? What do you call him? Those ones I've learned are we used to call a chain knows player shane knows fire yeah, I heard that too. So gino's flat nose I think are a little lighter on the top, maybe another one that I have a flat years yeah, yeah, I think these air flow okay, so there have made a loop and then I'm going tio sort of wrap the sleep around the bottom I'm starting to wrap the excess chain that I have around the bottom of the loop and let's see, I'm just gonna twist it and then when you you can snip the little access and tuck the end in and we have made a little charm out of the bead and so now what we would do is put one of our jumper rings at the top of that take you a while to get proficient at turning those jump rings not when the lights different I think this light is just really it really doesn't because it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be really secure and, um I think any loop is a pretty loop on these and so there's our yeah it's it's just and these round nose pliers make a really nice luke so yeah, it doesn't although I will say it's very fun to take a jewelry making class it's quite the rabbit hole so I met alice and we're at a bead store and yeah, we had many phone conversations about beads so there we have I put a jump a ring at the top we have a loop at the bottom and a loop at the back so our loop it the tops and now you have another charm. Do you guys want me to do the head pin thing again? You would look at that again because it's kind of do you think you the other thing I was going to show is if you want to add things like sequins poor this is ah these particular pieces here are sequins and beads that I cut off of a shirt I'll show you the shirt was a cute shirt but I bought this at the thrift store for my daughter who didn't wear it so we can use these as well in these make fun little charms and so what we'll do is we'll stack a few of these on ahead pin and I'll show you how that works too so what I'm doing is I'm just if it will fit I'm stacking it on there and I'm just putting it randomly I like them when they're really random and these this shirt had little bugle beads on it had little plastic beads and little and sequence all different colors but if any more in there so you could stack this up as high as you wanted it and then again take the round pliers and we're going actually I'm gonna hold this with this could have been that to the side again spending and then we're going to make our loop at the top so blair yes is this what's called a wire wrapped loop or is this a basic lou because there's two different loops that you can make I think I think they're wrapping it around this is why iraq actually ok, so what is the basic basic loop is when you just go and stop oh so you don't wrap the bottom right? I just wrapped the body because it feels for secure yeah, the way it is what I would use on track and it's pretty it like the way it looks has the decorative element as loving really sturdy yeah I'm going to twist this three or four times around the bottom and then I'm just going toe trim off the extra wire and then you guys want to get that little edge just want to print that in there so that is really tiny but we made a charm from those little sequence so that's kind of how I make the charms it is a pretty convenient if I don't know why this has a whole maybe it was part of an old necklace, but it is convenient if it has that you could just put a jump a ring in it sometimes the pieces that you get we'll need some extra strength behind them and so I would use one of these flat bail's put your jewelry glue on and glue it to the back and that is basically how you create the charms for the charm bracelet did you guys feel anything out? How long does it take for the glue to dry? So, um this feels pretty secure. Um I don't know the exact date of the drying time of, I believe seventy two hours for phil cure dry yeah, so a lot of times if I'm gluing onto back so these I'll just leave it overnight but this on last you chipped off some of the glue on that piece that came together. Are there any other ways for getting glue apart or most of the time they're actually pound of wire, and I was surprised to find that, but so with glue, that glue was so easy to come off that I just used my pliers and just kind of ate away at it, so I would do that. I don't really know when you start getting into solvents and things, I think that's going to eat away at these pieces so I wouldn't I wouldn't do that, so if you can't just chip it away or take a cloth or wash it off, it may not be suitable for a term, but maybe something else. Maybe you could create a new pair of earrings out of it, like the rest of that hearing was wrapped, these air, all fed through wires fed through them and that's, usually the way you find them. So apparently they fed the wire through, they glued the bigger beat on top, and then they colluded all to the back of that one.