Do you ever get absolutely disgusted with the amount of tiny junk items that build up in your house? Tiny is the defining word here. All of us have a junk drawer in the kitchen, boxes of stuff in the garage, and yet more stuff crammed into the drawers and cabinets and under the sofa cushions of our couch.

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Let's not forget the floor of our car or the glove compartment. Junk, junk, junk! Washers and nuts and binder clips and weird little keys and luggage-locks and dice and board-game pieces.

But you can put this stuff to good use when you do the Found Object Charm Bracelet, which I tend to think of as either the "Junk Drawer Charm Bracelet" or the fastest-assembled charm bracelet in the world.

It's a quirky, highly personal look that will be different for everyone depending upon her junk. It may not appeal to the more formal among you, but that's okay.

Perhaps you've got young daughters or nieces who want a fast and easy project for a bracelet that will go with almost everything in their wardrobe (except for their most dressed-up outfits, of course).

This project is featured on page 16 and on the cover of Katie Hacker's fabulous book Hip to Bead (see References and Amazon.com information below). The nicest thing you'll have to buy for this bracelet is the basic silver chain and clasp (if it doesn't come complete with clasp as mine did). All you need after that are jump rings or split rings, and junk!

Time of Project: Thirty minutes, tops – not including time to dig the junk out from your sofa cushions!

Technical knowledge: Nothing other than opening and closing a jump ring or operating an electric drill to put a hole in a game-piece such as the Ace of Clubs in the photo above.

Materials: (all available on Etsy.com or eBay.com or your local crafts store)
• Basic silver chain-link bracelet with clasp attached (or you can do this separately)
• Jump rings or split rings to attach your junk.
• Junk items, whatever you'd like, not much more than 1-inch in size.

Step 1. Gather your junk. I thought I had this part down because I know all about junk, right? But I found out that certain types of junk just don't look quite right. You're going for a fun, playful, slightly industrial look.

In Photo 2, you can see the type of junk I considered: a game-piece, a plastic O-ring that you put over a house-key, some weird little keys and washers, a bigger key, a green plastic pencil sharpener with a little grommet through the razor blade where I could put a big jump ring, a bolt-nut, and a binder clip in a hot-fuchsia color. I ultimately abandoned the sharpener for being too big, and the bolt-nut for not being big enough.

But I found that it didn't work to gather junk that used to be part of a piece of jewelry, however cheap-looking, like the stuff in Photo 3: the photo charm, the teachers' medal, and the red enamel star. Costume-jewelry stuff comes across as tacky and too fussy in this context. You want to assemble things that were never intended to be jewelry and take advantage of the surprise factor.

Step 2. Attach your junk with jump rings or split rings. Don't worry about precise placement. As with any charm bracelet, you can go "old style" as I've done here and just put on a few pieces that will stand out, or you could go "new style" and load the bracelet with junk for a playful, bristling effect.

Remember when you open your jump rings to do so with a twisting motion like you're tearing a piece of bread. See the photo. You are using your pliers to move one end of the jump ring towards you and the other end away from you.

To close, just move the ends back where they started. Never pull a jump ring open by yanking both ends straight backwards from each other or you'll never get it firmly closed again.

Step 3. Enjoy your bracelet. Yay, you're done! You might wonder whether someone would actually wear a bracelet made of junk from the garage and the floor of the car. Well, here I am in the photo modeling my bracelet on my very own scrawny little wrist. Yet another fun project from Hip to Bead.

References:
Hip to Bead by Katie Hacker, ISBN 1931499950, copyright 2006, Interweave Press LLC, page 46. Available at Amazon.com through this link: Hip to Bead: 32 Contemporary Projects for Today's Beader