This new-style charm bracelet for the month of August is made with cool, aquatic colors. See adjacent photo for finished bracelet.

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I started by trying to think of a design theme for August, which is difficult because there are no major gift-giving occasions during this month. However, August is a hot summer month in which people might vacation at the seashore. Good enough for me. Most of us jewelry makers probably have a lot of nautical-themed stuff we can use in a project.

Next I went to my copious amounts of jewelry-making junk and surveyed what I had. Tons of stuff! I used color first to narrow things down.

Do should I go with warm colors in brass or gold? If so, I'd look for charms and colors to suggest the sun and the sandy beach.

Or should I go with cool colors in silver? If so, I'd look for charms and colors to reflect the ocean. Pearls are a given either way. I personally think they look better with silver because of their cool luminosity, but they can work with gold.

I gathered ALL my junk with the cool silver spectrum on the left, and the warm gold spectrum on the right. Things that could go either way I put in the middle. They include a tiny glass jar of sand, green glass beads, and freshwater pearls.

I decided to go with the cool spectrum, and the materials I used are listed below. This is just a rough guide because the whole idea is that you put together something similar with what you've got on hand. As I worked through the project, I found myself setting stuff aside. As you can see in the adjacent photo, I ended up rejecting the porpoise charms and the long bead-units on headpins before the project ended.

Time of Project: About 3 hours for me. Thirty minutes to pick out stuff and plan the design, 1 hour to wrap all 18 of those pesky bead-units for the background texture, 1 more hour to attach those pesky bead-units with split rings, and a final thirty minutes to put on the big stuff. Many of you may be much faster!

Technical knowledge: Nothing other than making a wrapped bead-loop out of a headpin.

Materials: (all available on Etsy.com or eBay.com or your local crafts store)
• Bracelet with clasp, plain, sturdy, chain-link, silver, one
• Headpins, plain, silver, I used 25 but it's good to have extra.
• Jump rings or split rings, 6mm, silver, I used 22 but it's good to have extra. Note: A split ring is more secure but harder to pry apart and doesn't look quite as delicate or dressy. I used split rings, but I'd probably use jump rings were I to do it over.
• Charms, pewter, seashell, four
• Beads, glass, pale watery green, rectangular 5mm x 7mm, four. See close-up in little photo.
• Beads, freshwater pearls, cream colored, irregularly-shaped, about 3mm to 5mm, three. See close-up in little photo.
• Beads, glass "pearls", white, round, 3mm, I used 18 but it's good to have extra
• Beads, seed-beads, clear, round, 2mm, I used 43 but it's good to have extra
• Tools: jewelry pliers, chain nose
• Tools: jewelry pliers, round nose
• Tools: jewelry snips that cut flush
• Tools: safety goggles to wear when snipping excess wire off the headpin loops

Step 1: Lay out a preliminary design and have a look. In this photo, I'm evaluating cool stuff such as the freshwater pearls, the pewter seashell charms, and others next to my basic silver chain-link bracelet.

Something about that glass bottle with the sand just doesn't appeal to me. I set it aside to use with a gold-themed bracelet, maybe.

It also clarifies for me that this bracelet will be about water and sea foam so I'll be using mostly white and pale green. The little irregular glass beads get kicked out as well for some paler, rectangular beads that look more intriguing.

I lay the bracelet basic bracelet out as a line and as a circle to see what it looks like. Then I just place the various charms and beads where I think they'll go, sometimes loosely threaded on unbent headpins, to see what the overall design should be.

Step 2: Pick out the beads or bead-units for the background texture. Here you'll decide on a basic bead, or a bead-unit made of a sequence of basic beads, on a headpin. In the next few steps, you'll attach them at regular intervals along the chain-link bracelet. You want to create a fringe of identical "strands" that will form a backdrop against which you can attach the showier charms or beads.

I decided to make my bead-units out of three beads: by placing one 2mm clear seed-bead on a headpin, topping that with a 3mm glass "pearl" bead, and topping that with another 2mm clear seed-bead. You can see this in the photo as well as see how the split rings I used to attach the bead-units look more cluttered than if I had used jump rings. I wish now that I'd used jump rings, but I had to keep going (or completely re-do) to keep the look consistent. Unfortunately I couldn't just switch over to using jump rings halfway through.

Step 3: Decide how many beads, or bead-units, you need for the background texture. It's up to individual taste how many beads or bead-units you think you'll need to attach to the bracelet to give it sufficient background texture. You could put a bead-unit on every single link, or every other link, or every four links. The important thing is to put the links at regular intervals. You can eyeball it, or you can be a math-nerd like me and count the total links and divide by whichever number will help you to attach your bead unit to the correct link at regular intervals.

Note: You may think that putting a bead-unit on every single link would look good. However, if you find wrapping bead-loops to be as tedious as I do, your resolve may run out long before then. The chain-link bracelet I started with has 36 links total. I made nine bead-units and then – oh, golly – I was more than ready to stop! I divided 36 by nine to get four. This tells me that if I did stop making the units, I'd have to space my nine total at every fourth link to have them at regular intervals.

So I did another design check. I set the nine bead-units next to the bracelet spaced at intervals of four in one photo to see what they looked like spread apart. Well … okay, I guess. That's what you see in the upper photo. Then I tried setting them next to every other link as in the next photo, and guess what? It looks better to me that way. So I have to make nine more units for a total of 18! Oh, no!

Step 4: Figure out how you want to attach your beads or bead-units to the bracelet. Before you start wrapping your single beads, or bead-units, on headpins, you need to decide how you want to attach them to your chain-link bracelet. Directly to the links in the bracelet? Or do you want to use jump rings to attach loop to chain-link? If you use rings, you'll make it possible for the bead-units to have a little more motion for dangling, fringe-y fun when being worn.

You could attach the bead-loops directly to the links of the bracelet as you form them. All you have to do is to thread the headpin through the desired link after the bead, or top-bead in the unit, and then keep the link above your pliers as you're wrapping the headpin around its stem (see Step 5). That will keep the link in the loop.

As you can see in the photo that shows all 18 bead-units attached (finally!) I chose to wrap my bead-loops separately from the chain-link bracelet, and then to attach each one with a split ring. This is to allow for even more movement of the bead-units like a fringe-y bead curtain than would be possible if I attached them directly to the bracelet.

Step 5. Wrap the beads or bead-units on the headpins. If you wrap the loops separately and then attach to the bracelet with jump rings, then you'll do Step 5 and Step 6 separately. If you wrap the loops directly on the desired chain-link, then you'll combine the two steps. In this case, see the note at Step 6 about where on the chain-link you need to attach your bead-unit. Also see, if you wish, the second to the last photo in this article where I'm attaching a green glass bead directly to a chain-link.

How to wrap a bead-loop on a headpin. See adjacent photo. Take your headpin with its basic bead or bead-unit in place and grip it near the top bead with the end-point of the chain-nose pliers (I'm holding it with round-nose pliers just for show in the photo). If you're right-handed like I am, it helps to hold it in your left hand. Then use the round-nose pliers in your right hand to bend the headpin wire into a loop around the curve of the chain-nose pliers. Once you've formed your loop, wrap the headpin into three tight coils around its stem below the loop to secure it. Snip off the excess headpin wire. If you're left with a ragged stub of wire sticking out, use your chain-nose pliers to press it back into the stem.

Step 6. Attach your beads or bead-units to the bracelet at regular intervals. Either include the desired chain-link in each loop to attach the bead-units directly to the bracelet, or finish the loop separately and then use either a split ring or a jump ring to attach each unit to the desired link in the bracelet. See the note in the materials list about split rings versus jump rings.

Note: Make sure that you attach each bead-unit to the BOTTOM of each chain-link, whether you're wrapping the loop directly onto the link or you're using rings to attach loop to link. You want a uniform look with each bead-unit hanging straight down off its link in the same direction, and not sprouting off from the top of the link here and there. See the photo of my three bead-units. The one in the middle is attached incorrectly to the top of the chain-link, which makes it stick out and look weird in comparison to the bead-units on either side that are attached correctly to the bottom of their links.

Once you're done with this, the hardest part is over. Yay!

Step 7. Pick out the big stuff! Lay out your bracelet for another preliminary design evaluation now that you have the background texture in place. Set your bigger beads and charms in place and switch them around until you get a look you like.

As you can see in the photo, I rejected those funky-looking bead-units that I built out of three beads with a silver porpoise charm suspended from the end-loop of the headpin. It just didn't look right. I ended up keeping the soft-looking pewter seashell charms as the biggest items on the bracelet.

Two things you want to remember: First, if you have a big, heavy charm or bead-unit that will be a focal point to the bracelet, center it at the bracelet's midpoint. According to Charmed Bracelets by Tracey Zabar (page 63): "Hang one charm, usually the heaviest, opposite the clasp, so gravity works in your favor. The clasp stays on top, and your charm bracelet is always perfectly positioned on your wrist." [1] I didn't have anything like this on this bracelet, so I didn't have to worry about it.

Second, try not to group two big charms or bead-units at the endpoints of the bracelet when you lay it out in a line. I always slip up and want to do this because I have a robot-like affinity for symmetry. But as soon as you put the bracelet on, the line becomes a circle, and you end up with two big items clumped together near the clasp. Instead, set the big items in a little ways from the end points of the bracelet.

Step 8. Attach your big items to the bracelet. Since I had sufficient background texture with those 18 simple bead-units that I painstakingly made and attached previously, I didn't need to attach much more to make this look like a new-style charm bracelet. Of course, you can if you'd like.

I decided to keep it simple by making four bead-units made from rectangular green-glass beads. I used a seed-bead on the bottom of each big glass bead to keep it on its headpin because its holes were drilled a little large for the headpin. I wrapped the bead-loops directly onto the desired chain-link as shown in the little adjacent photo and I just eyeballed where it should go. (I stop getting mathematical about it after I've put on the background texture at regular intervals.)

Step 9. Finish up the bracelet. I finished by attaching three big freshwater pearls on headpins to the bracelet. I considered using four, but three looked better for some reason. I wrapped their headpin loops directly to the desired chain-links, which I picked out by eyeballing it again. As with the green-glass beads, I used a clear seed-bead between each pearl and the end of its headpin. In this case, it was to buffer the pearls a little because they looked delicate.

Since I started with a basic chain-link bracelet that already had its toggle-clasp attached, I found myself finished after putting on that third freshwater pearl. You might have to attach your clasp using jump rings or split rings at this point. Here I am in the photo, modeling the bracelet on my admittedly scrawny wrist. You can adjust the links up or down for a better fit.


References:
[1] Charmed Bracelets by Tracey Zabar, ISBN 1584793341, Stewart Tabori and Chang publishers an imprint of Abrams Books, 3004. Page 63.