Charm Bracelet Tutorial

Hello and welcome to the silver charm bracelet tutorial. In this project we're going to be making a really lovely bracelet, very effective design and very popular at the moment. If you have a little look in the kit and see what we get. So we're going to get a length of chain, some lovely open links, so that we can add in the jump rings. We're going to get some bolt ring clasps, some jump rings and a variety of charms. If we have a look here at the finished pieces, we've got two different sorts, different varieties of charm bracelet you can make, one with a single strand of chain and then this one here where you can layer your chain and add in your charms.

So if we get started and we'll have a look and the tools we'll be using, so we'll be using our red-handled chain nose pliers and round nose blue handle pliers and yellow handled snips, side cutters. So our starting point for our bracelets is to cut a length of chain, so what we want for our chain is we want to create a measure eight roughly seven and a half inches in total, so that's going to be the total for our bracelet. We need to take into account that some of the findings, so the bolt ring clasp and the jump rings, might take up about two and a half centimetres, to an inch.

So if we cut off a length initially about six, six and a half inches that should be fine. I'm going to take my snips and just cut into my chain and I’ll lose a link because they're all joined together. So we've got our lengths of chain, what you can also do which is a really nice and contemporary look and very useful as well, is just adding a little extender chain. So for that you're going to do exactly the same, so you might measure I back an inch or so and again with your snips, cut off, so you've got your chain.

Now going to add in some of the findings. I'm going to open the jump ring, I’m going to find the jump ring and there's a little saw mark at the top and I’ll take my two pliers, I’m going to open and close like a door or a gate. So the saw mark is at the top I’m going to bring pliers towards me to open and close. Now add in one jump ring at the end of the chain and close. So on the other end, I’m going to add in my bolt ring clasp, so again line the saw mark on the jump ring and open up and add in. So pop the chain on and then the bolt ring clasp and close.

So if we want to add in the extender, I’d go back to the other end and again find the saw mark, open and close the jump ring and add in the extender chain, and you can open and close your jump rings a few times, you're always making sure that when you close back up, you get a nice neat finish at the end. So we've now got our base for the charm bracelet, so we can take some of our charms and again to attach the charms we're going to use the jump rings. So again in using our pliers open and close, open like a gate or a door.

I'm going to pop one of our charms on, so rather than close it now, I’m going to let that fall there and I’m going to start off, I’m going to do quite a uniform design with my charms. So I’m going to find the central point, just going to pop the two jump rings together and pick up the link that falls in the centre. Now take the jump ring and pop that into the link and close and you can do as many different variations of the charm bracelet as you'd like.

So I can add in, I could measure out, I’d say every inch or so and add in extra charms, like so and close or I could group them together and pop two charms on one jump ring. So you've got nice movement and group them together. So I’m just working my way, all the way along the chain to create my charm bracelet. So we can lay it out, have a little look how we're how we looking, so you see getting lovely movement there and the charms are going to work really nicely. So if I wanted to do the variation with the multiple chains, I just cut myself different lengths of the longer chain and attach them at either end to the jump rings, but by adding in, as many charms as you like, that gives you your charm bracelet.