Overly Charmed

I'm deeply embroiled in a terrible law class that requires a ridiculous amount of reading and writing, even for a graduate class. This means that I need occasional mental breaks, and I find having something tactile to do helps to clear my brain. Since the pinata is drying, I needed another project. I wanted to make a gift for my friend's party that was more keep-able than the pornata, so I decided to go with jewelry.

I cyber-stalked my friend's pintrest and facebook pages, and found pictures that she had liked, and some of her family. I know she really likes bracelets, so I'm going to try to make one using the photos. The first order of business was making tiny copies of the photos. This was complicated by the fact that I don't currently have a working printer. I outsourced the printing to my father, who delivered me a page of tiny pictures.

The tiny photos then became even tinier circles. They're on my phone for scale. Also because it made a convenient holding tray. I guess there really is an app for everything. 

I bought some cabochon trays in bulk on Amazon, along with the little glass pieces that go into them. This was harder than it sounds, because sellers of the trays don't seem to feel its necessary to say what size glass matches it, which is important because if they are mismatched then you can't make jewelry magic. Eventually I found some products that looked like they would match. I stuck the pictures into the circles, added a drop of glue, and threw on the glass pieces. 

The result is cute little charms. The glass helps to magnify the photos, but some of them are still hard to distinguish from little blobs of colour. That's ok, I think my friend likes colour, and she will probably be able to recognise her kids, right? RIGHT?

The next step was to put these puppies onto a bracelet. For that, I needed to make a bracelet. I'm kinda guessing at size here, I used a standard 7 inch bracelet measurement, and added a giant clasp so that it is theoretically easier to put on than using a tiny one. Then I attached three lengths of jewelry chain to hang charms from. The silver on the hardware is all slightly different, which bothers me, but it is what I have, so I am going with it. I am hoping it looks charmingly mismatched and vintage. She can upgrade later. 

Since I don't have any matching jumprings to hang the charms from, I just took apart an extra piece of chain and am using the links. I hope this works. I realise at this point just how many charms I have. It's a lot, but I don't really want to give any of them up. I will just put them all on, and she can edit down to her favourites.

Holy crap, that's a lot of charms. I tried to sort of stagger them on different strands, but I'm not sure I was very effective. I think my mistake was putting the bracelet together before adding the charms. I will probably have to move some of them around before I gift this. 

It looks slightly less overwhelming when its hanging. Maybe it can always be hanging, like the pornata. 

It doesn't look terrible on, but it is pretty heavy and.. clacky. I sound like a troupe of gypsies if I shake my hand. I think my mother would call it "interesting" or "bohemian" or one of those other mom words that mean "that looks like crap and I would never wear it, but you are wearing it and so I will say something that sounds nice but really expresses my disapproval instead." 

My solution: I think I will take my jewelry pliers with me when I give her this, so that I can resize and remove as needed. I considered making a matching necklace with the extra charms, but I'm not sure that would turn out any better. I may just make each strand of this removable so that she can customise.