I remember back in my school days, wearing cute jewelry during the holidays was a cool thing. Jingle bell earrings at Christmas, Spider rings at Halloween, etc. Well, this year, I decided I’d give making some fun and crafty jewelry a try. Now, I’m no stranger to making beaded bracelets, and necklaces with already made charms, but the goal of this project was to have my girls make their own charms, and I’d help put them together into jewelry. Sounds fun? It was!

Now, the original intent was to make a necklace and charm bracelet, but as we went on, we thought of other cool things we could make with these charms.

Things you need:

• Shrinkable Plastic- These come in various types, Clear, Frosted, White and even Ink Jet now.
• Necklace Chain and clasps
• Bracelet Chain and clasps
• Ribbon
• Hair Barrette Clips
• Key rings
• Color Pencils or Permanent Markers

If you can draw, awesome. If not, then you can find pictures that you’d like to use, print and then trace them through the shrinkable plastic. If you are using the ink jet plastic, print off whatever photos/images you’d like to turn into charms!

We chose a few basic images to draw and color in. I drew and/or traced the pictures and let my girls have at coloring them. We used colored pencils as suggested by the instruction sheets, but after our pictures were baked, the excess color pencil was rubbing off on our fingers. I think permanent markers would work better.  Do NOT use crayons or any water based/washable markers!

Our pictures measured approximately 4-5 in. If you want to make small charms for a charm bracelet or the like, I’d keep your original drawings to around 2.5-3 in. Think wallet sized photo.. They will shrink!

Once you have colored in, or printed all of your charms, use a hole punch to make a 1/8″ size hole in your drawing. Preheat the oven to the settings outlined in the instructions for your shrinkable plastic.

Place your pictures onto a flat cookie sheet and place into the oven for a few minutes. This is the fun part! My girls LOVE watching their drawings shrink! You’ll see them curl up, and then eventually flatten out. Once your drawings have flattened back out, you can take them out of the oven and let them cool flat for a bit.

Now for the next fun part. Deciding what to do with them! I took some necklace chain, cut it to a perfect necklace size for my girls, put a jump ring through one of the charms and voila. They now have a cute necklace that they can wear on St. Patrick’s Day.. and they made it themselves! Other ideas can be a book mark… Putting a ribbon through the charm and tying it on either end. You can also make hair clips. Take some really cute green ribbon, and you can either use a jump ring on the charm to secure the charm to the hair clip, or use a hot glue gun to secure the charm to the ribbon. Key rings are another idea. Put a jump ring on your charm so that it can move freely around the key ring. There are so many possibilities! Have fun with it, and let the kids even design their own pictures! Who knows what they can cup up with when their imaginations run!

This craft is great for other holidays and even gifts!

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I am a participant in the Walmart Moms program. Walmart provided me with compensation for my time and efforts on this post. Participation in this program is voluntary. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.