Crystal Heart Charm Bracelet

Hello and welcome to another video brought to you by allfreejewelrymaking.com and keepsakecrafts.net. Today we are going to be making this pretty sparkly heart and crystal themed silver charms bracelet.

The first thing you will need to do in order to make your charm bracelet, is to choose your charms and to keep the design cohesive, I’ve decided to limit my charms to heart shapes and crystals. You'll also need some chain and I’d like to buy in a package like this, so I can just cut off a piece that I want. Some jump rings, this time around I’m going to use a toggle clasp, you'll also need basic jewellery making tools like chain nose pliers.

So now you can see I’ve taken the time to do some laying out, the first thing I did was cut a seven inch piece of chain and then I started laying out my crystals. I'm going to put this heavy 18 millimetre heart by the clasp, which will hopefully weight it, so that the bracelet won't always be clasp slide up on my wrist. Then I just spaced out some of these little silver heart charms and the crystal hearts.

I've decided not to use these, or these, I’ll save them for another project and I wanted to fill it in a little bit more so I found these crystals. These are really pretty from vintage jewellery that I found just out and about yard sales, I forget where these came from. So these hearts, if you can see they actually have a hole drilled at the top. So these are going to be attached with jump rings, but these ones are just regular beads and the holes in the some of these beads are a little big, so I’m going to start with a clear seed bead on my head pin. That will keep me from losing these and we'll just make bead dangles out of those and the way you do that, is you start with a pair of chain nose pliers, right at the top of the beam and bend your head pin at a 90-degree angle, just like that.

Then you need a pair of round nose pliers and grab right at that bend and over and I’m actually going to wrap this, so that I don't lose my charm. I'm not going to finish that wrap, I’m just going to start it, like that and I’m going to do that for all four of these. All right, so you can see I’ve done a little bit more laying out, I’ve started the wire wraps on these crystal dangles. The first thing that I’m going to do actually is attach this large 18 millimetre heart, now this heart is so big, that you can see how thick it is where the hole goes through that. You would have to have a ridiculous size jump ring so I’m not going to bother with the jump ring, instead I’m going to use a piece of 22 gauge wire. This is about three inches long so, I’m going to put it through leave one end about an inch long and 22 gauge.

I can actually manipulate a good part of the beginning of the wrap with my fingers, just like that, so that the wire the coming straight up along the heart and I’m going to trim that shorter one down to over a quarter of an inch from that spot and then use round nose pliers to start a loop. I'm going to trim that a little bit more, that's too long and straighten that out, try again. Okay so I’m going to start a loop and then I’m going to put it on my bracelet towards one end. I think I’ll put it on this second link. I'm going to open that up a little, you make your loop, leave it open. Okay and then I’m just going to hold on to that and wrap this remaining end of wire down, so it wraps around both wires that are coming out of the top of the heart and be careful these are crystals, so you can crack them if you're too rough.

I'm just using my chain nose pliers to wrap that end around and once it's all wrapped, tuck it in and now that's on there. I took a little time and counted the links and figured out how often that I have these and I want to have one, pretty much every link, with occasional skipping. I think there's 18 charms here and there's 23 links that I’m going to be using, so I’ll just go ahead and start. These are 6 millimetre jump rings and these are just right for these 10 millimetre hearts. You have to open it fairly wide, pop it on there, I’m going to skip a couple. To start use your chain nose pliers to open your jump ring and close it, make sure that the jump rings are nice and secure, closed well and then it will just keep going. At the metal charms, the same way, and then these are wrapped the same way that I wrap this heart. Pop it on, hold onto it with chain nose pliers and wrap that around. So I’ll be back once I have all of my charms attached.

So here you can see I’ve gone ahead and added all of my charms to my bracelet chain. One thing to keep in mind when you're using these crystals is that the retail on them is about a dollar apiece for the little ones, so when you're adding your jump rings, make sure that you open and close them properly, twisting them open, rather than pulling them open, so that you don't weaken the metal and that you make sure that they're closed securely and tightly, so that you don't lose your nice little charms.

Here we are, just have to add the clasp. Now, when you're using a toggle clasp, you want to always make sure that the end with the bar has a little extra chain, because that you need that in order to bend it over if you have a big bulky bead in the way, you won't be able to bend it over and pop it through the hole around part of your toggle. So I’m just going to go ahead and add these with jump rings and I’ll show you one more time how to properly open a jump ring. Put the split at 12 o'clock, grab one side with a pair of chain nose pliers and the other side with another pair and push one pair away from you and pull the other towards you, so that they're twisted open.

Then we'll just pop these on, just leave one pair of chain nose pliers on the jump ring, that way you don't have to reposition, put on your chain and half of your clasp and then you can just close it up, making sure that the ends are nice and tight, not going to lose anything. One thing i tried to do, I think I succeeded when I was adding these as i added all the charms to the same, the bottom link of the bracelet, so as it as it hangs, they all hang down. I just thought it would look a little nicer as you're wearing it.

You saw me there open that with just one pair of chain nose pliers, sometimes the bigger jump rings you can do that, but I do like to close them with just with pliers, so that I put a little bit of pressure towards the centre, as you bend it, so that you know those ends are meeting and then to close it up you just pop it through the heart and there you have it, isn't that sweet?

Kind of a fun pretty girly bracelet, I hope you've enjoyed this project and take some time and collect some lovely beads and make yourself or somebody else something. Special thanks for watching for more crafting and jewellery ideas and inspiration please be sure to check out keepsakecrafts.net