Just Bead It! Quick and Easy Jewelry: Charms

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Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and welcome to our new series of beading videos called Just Bead It! This series will cover simple beading techniques where only one or two steps is required to end up what a finished piece of jewelry. In this first video we're gonna cover charms. I pulled out some examples here and what's great about charms is they're so versatile and they usually are the focal point already. So you don't have to add a lot to them to make a really nice piece of jewelry. You can see here we have some seasonal earrings and this is really very easy to make. weakest actually at that time right there on the earring hook I didn't even use a jump ring or any other type of winter connector. And then here we've actually connected to charms together and we did that be a little jump ring and then we just put the top charm right onto the earring hook to happen to be a real decorative earring hook so it looks nice. We have a classic charm bracelet right here and we've added some extra little beaded dangles for a little of added interest but you don't have to. You can just use the charms alone. It will look really nice. Here we have a premade sterling silver chain. All we did was put a sterling silver charm of a dolphin on it and that's an instant piece of jewelry. It would make a great gift. Here we have a bookmark. This is actually a necklace extender chain. We didn't even have to cut any chain and we just placed a little initial charm at the base of it. In terms of some crafty items we have a little cellphone dangle. pleaseW just put a little wolf charm on the end of it with a little Swarovski Crystal. I've actually made some wine charms as well. You can see we added some extra beads but you wouldn't have too you could do this with the charms alone. So if you're thinking of making some charm jewelry there's a couple things to take into consideration. First is the size of the charm. Technically these are both considered charms. If you just look at them at first glance and perhaps online or in a catalog, they're going to look to be about the same size. But you're going to want to make sure that you look at the actual measurements and see what the size is. Because if you look at this one here, if we're gonna try to put it onto an earring hook, it would just look too small. Whereas this one looks pretty good on an earring hook and that's all you need to make a pair of earrings. The other thing you want to consider when you're picking out your charms is if they're single sided or double sided. A single sided charm is going to look beautiful from the front and then from the back it's usually gonna look like it has an impression, like it has been stamped and this is great for a pair of earrings but let's say you're making a bracelet which might flop back-and-forth between the two sides you're going to want a double-sided charm. When you're looking at charms they should say their single sided are double sided. The final element you're going to want to take into consideration when you're making jewelry using charms is how you're going to attach those charms to the rest of your jewelry? In most cases a simple open jump ring is going to do. A jump ring is called open when it has a little slits and will allow you to just open it. Closed jump rings are a continual circle with no slit. You can see how easy it was to open. All you have to do is slide your charm onto it and then close up the jump ring. This is good for earrings, lightweight charms. Something that is not going to endure a lot of stress. In a case like a bracelet, you know that it's gonna get knocked around. You know that these charms are a little bit heavier. So you want to attach them with perhaps a split ring. Here's a split ring right here. I'll get my nail under it. It's kind of like the ring that your keychain comes on and that's very secure way attaching a charm. You also have the option of jump locks which look pretty much like an open jump ring but they lock securely. Or a lock-in jump ring and that's actually what I've used here on this bracelet. You can see that it creates a really nice solid permanent bond. That's just done with a lock-in jump ring which has an actual locking mechanism. You're going to go ahead and put the rod through the hole. We actually have another video from Beadaholique.com which will show you how to do that. S real quick before we sign off here I want to show you how to make a really simple pair of earrings using a charm and a earring hook. Take the earring hook, open the hoop at the bottom. The same way you would open a jump ring. So just move it to the side. Place your charm onto that open loop. Close it backup and there you go. That's really all there is to it. There are hundreds of styles of charms to choose from. These make fun easy projects and the possibilities are endless. Have fun working with charms. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!