This is the second in a series of articles on the subject of making charmed jewelry. Specifically a charm bracelet although the basic directions can be used to make any sort of charmed jewelry or perhaps to hang a charm from a buckle on your purse or shoes.
Charmed jewelry is one of those perpetual favorites that never go out of style. When done right, and why would you want to do it any other way, your charmed jewelry is a wearable statement of your personal life. Getting the charmed jewelry 'right' involves building your jewelry from scratch so that all the charms interlink and tell the tale that you want told.
Follow the easy instructions below to build your charmed jewelry from scratch using a open linked bracelet, bails and your selected charms.
Required supplies for your charm bracelet:
- Open link 7.5 inch in length sterling silver bracelet. The one used in this article was purchased from Fire Mountain Gems.
- Snap on style sterling silver bails. Also, purchased from Fire Mountain Gems.
- Your selection of charms. Five charms were used to make the surfer girl charm bracelet shown on this page. More information on exactly duplicating these charms is given via blog.
That is it - no special tools are needed. The term 'snap on bail' is kind of a misnomer. There is no spring assembly that opens and closes this bail like a lobster claw clasp. However, if you open the bail correctly to place the charm and the bracelet link, the bail will slide back in place smoothly - and stay in place securing your charm on the chain.
How to put your charm bracelet together:
- Lay the open link bracelet flat on a table making sure all the links are laying in an unkinked manner.
- Position your charms around the bracelet, spacing them evenly. Rearrange them until you are happy with their order.
- Open your five bails. These bails are opened by slightly moving the top portion of the back of the bail to the left and the bottom portion of the back of the bail to the right creating a hole in which to insert both the charm and the link of the chain. In other words, you do not just pull the top section of the back of the bail up and away from the bottom section. If you do that your bail will not snap back together correctly.
- Start with the center charm. Pick up the exact link that is in the middle of the bracelet and place it on the bail. This is followed by placing the charm on the bail. See Bail Instruction Image One and Image Two. Both images show approximately how your charm and chain will look as you place them on the bail.
- Slide the two sections of the snap on bail back together by moving the top portion to the right and the bottom portion to the left (just the opposite of how you opened the bail originally). See Bail Instruction Image Three. After sliding the two portions of the bail back together the charm should hang freely down from the chain.
- Repeat for the other four charms. Make sure that the charms are evenly spaced around the bracelet and all the charms are facing the same way.
The great thing about snap on bails, even sterling silver ones, is the fact that they are relatively inexpensive. So, if you mangle a few bails in the process of learning how to open and close them - no big deal. As of the publish date of this article the bails cost approximately .30 each.
The snap on bails sold at the Fire Mountain link given above come in a bag of 20. Save the rest of your bails to either add more charms to your bracelet or to make other charmed jewelry. Obviously, it would be quite easy to use this method to add a few charms to a necklace - or to hang a charm from an earring wire to create a pair of charmed earrings.
Subsequent articles will give directions to make the Surfer Girl Charm Bracelet shown on this page using two other methods - using jump rings which requires a jump ring tool and Link Locks.
Note: the Surfer Girl Charm Bracelet shown on this page was made using a figaro style sterling silver bracelet. Figaro style chains will also be discussed in the next article.
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