DIY: Spiral Wire Necklace

Looking at a spiral notebook one morning, I thought the spiral metal rings created interesting shapes that I could create jewelry with.

DIY: Wire Rope Necklace

While at a hardware store I came across some wire rope that I thought was an interesting material and thought I could create jewelry with it.

I got 10 feet of 1/16 inch size wire rope at 26 cents a foot to experiment with. Regular cutters didn’t work on this wire rope, so I had to get special wire rope cutters (which weren’t particularly cheap), but they cut through the wire rope easily.

DIY: Plastic Canvas Bangle

A bangle doesn’t require a clasp, so this bracelet takes only a few materials to create. The hardest part is figuring out the size that’s appropriate for your wrist.

DIY: Used Gift Card Jewelry

I wanted to use used gift cards in creating jewelry since they’re pretty sturdy and waterproof. And while some gift cards are pretty as-is, most gift card design isn’t something I’d like to wear. Thus, I decided to paint the gift cards with nail polish because of the color selection available and the fact that the paint is waterproof.

DIY: Knotted Embroidery Floss and Jump Ring Necklace

Recently at a store I saw a necklace that added a nice pop of color, and while it wasn’t very expensive, I thought it would be fairly simple to make. So this is my rendition of a Knotted Embroidery Floss and Jump Ring Necklace.

DIY: Button Elastic Bracelet

Most of the buttons I bought from Goodwill were fairly generic, mismatched and on the bland side of color. To brighten things up for my Button Elastic Bracelet, I decided to paint my buttons with nail polish since nail polish comes in an array of colors and is waterproof.

DIY: Button Tower Jewelry

I didn’t need it, but somehow I couldn’t resist buying a jar of buttons at Goodwill. They weren’t fancy buttons, but mostly just the flat two or four holed buttons used in shirts. I divided up the buttons according to their size and number of holes because I thought I’d try using the smaller ones for jewelry.

DIY: Fabric Elastic Bracelet

Fabric scraps just seem to accumulate with every attempt at sewing a garment, and then I’m left with all these bits and pieces that sit around purposelessly. I thought I might be able to use some fabric scraps to create a simple elastic bracelet (that’s rather like a flat scrunchie).

Gear Up Earrings

When I took apart my watches from my Jar of Junk and realized how tiny all the parts were, I decided to buy some larger gears to use for making jewelry. I still may be able to use the tiny gears from my watches in some way, but for my purposes I wanted gears large enough that you could actually tell that they were gears. With my purchased bag of gears and other watch parts, I decided to make earrings using some of the larger gears.

Peter Pan Collar Chainmail Necklace

This necklace came about in a roundabout way as it started out as a bracelet. I’d wanted to try a simple chainmail pattern that used two different sized jump rings and that wouldn’t take too much thought to put together. Yet after I finished the bracelet, I looked at it and was left unexcited; it was just too plain. Unsure of what I wanted to do, I put it away and came back to it months later, deciding to change it into a necklace.

Watch Choker

Once I’d disassembled the watches from my Jar of Junk, my eye was automatically drawn to one of the glass external pieces that protect the watch face (it was only one that was in decent condition). I really liked the simple shape of the piece and thought I could use it to create a piece of jewelry; I decided to make a choker.

DIY: Braided Yarn and Duct Tape Bracelet

Using the same yarn and duct tape I used in my Yarn and Duct Tape Necklace, I decided to create a braided bracelet; I thought multiple braids would create a nice texture.

DIY: Yarn and Duct Tape Necklace

As I roamed the yarn section of a craft store, I decided I wanted to make a necklace out of a fine yarn. I decided against a flat color in favor of a gray and white yarn; I thought the color shifts in the yarn would work well in jewelry.

The main problem I had in creating jewelry with yarn is what to do with the yarn ends, and my solution was using duct tape to keep the yarn ends from looking ragged. Since duct tape comes in an array of colors, I selected a black duct tape to match my yarn.

DIY: Key Chain Pendant Necklace

I’ve mentioned that I went through a phase of getting Japanese key chains as souvenirs (that I inevitably never used). I don’t have much of a desire to use a key chain as an actual key chain because it adds unwanted weight and bulk, but I thought I could reuse a key chain by turning it into a necklace pendant.

DIY: Rubber Band Bracelet

I like using items I see and use every day in different ways. I had quite a few rubber bands and thought they could be tied together to make a quick and easy bracelet.

Tassel Necklace

I was looking the beading section at a craft store and my eyes fell across a tassel—but to my disappointment it wasn’t a cute one. Tassels are interesting to me because they can go one to too ways: sophisticated or trashy (depending on how they’re used and what they’re made of). There weren’t any other tassel options to buy, so I thought I would just make my own.

With the supplies I already had at home, I chose a bead to be the top of my tassel and attached a pearl beneath it and then added a few lengths of chain below that. I thought about the tassel being on just a single chain, but it was too dull. So I decided to crisscross the chains to create more visual interest. 

Link Me

I stumbled upon a book about chainmail jewelry while at the library, and immediately thought of the British having chainmail (like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). In leafing through the book, there were many patterns to choose from (and varying in difficulty), but it looked like something I could do and decided to try it.

Make a Statement

I was shopping at a clothing store and stopped to look at their costume jewelry; I found a necklace that I kind of liked that had various chains strung together. I checked the price, internally scoffed, and thought “I’m not paying that for this. I’ll just make it myself.”