How Charming...

I couldn't resist that title!



I recently finished off a charm bracelet kit that I bought years and years ago through the school bookclub. The kit had the bracelet, beads, wire, clips and instructions to make 5 different under-the-sea themed charms.

I love the finished result, but they were soo fiddly to make!! The instructions required that at some points, 4 lengths of wire would pass through one bead each time and there was no way that was going to happen! So they worked with a little bit of instruction-tweaking, a fair dose of patience (well, sometimes), pliers and help from Crafty Things. If I was going to remake the charms I would use finer wire to make life much easier.



I started off with the turtle, and didn't really have many problems until I came to attach the lobster clip used to clip them on the bracelet. It was one of those 4-length circumstances. Hmm well, quite a bit of frustration later and it was attached safely. Next was the fish. No trouble with the charm but I'd learnt about the clip attaching now. The instructions said to attach it to the centre bead of the big fin but it already had two wire lengths through it so the fish's mouth it was. Next was the crab and I made the charm and then left it for a while (i.e. years) until I attached the clip. Instead of putting the wire through the one bead I used a few of the nearby ones to secure the clip and that worked ok. The octopus and seahorse were made in quick succession. I had a little trouble with the octopus' legs - the wire tail would go into the bead ok but not out the other side because I'd pulled the row a little too tight. The beads had no room to move and there was no way to change it. So don't look to close at his legs because it's extremely untidy. I had similar trouble with the seahorse. You make a right angle turn at the end of his head involving sliding the wire through the entirety of a previous row. The row happened to be bent and the wire refused to got through properly until we could get the row to straighten up a bit.

When I first got the kit the bracelet was quite a bit too big for me, since I've always had small wrists, but now it fits pretty well. As you can see in the top photo, the charms are pretty big (approx 3.5cm long) which makes doing some things (for example typing) difficult. But I'm happy with it.

Who knows, I might just collect myself other, smaller, charms and make it into a really intricate, full charm bracelet that isn't quite so themed.