Welcome to another jewelry-making video brought to you by KeepsakeCrafts.net. Today, I have
a great, quick project for you. It's a bracelet made with small chains woven through large
chains. It has a great masculine feel but I'll also show you how to dress it up and
make it more feminine. So to make this bracelet, you will need a
7.5-inch piece of three-quarter inch link chain. That's for a woman's sized bracelet. If you're
going to make this for a guy, you'll need to get some measurements and make it larger.
And make it larger than the wrist size. This is a thick bracelet so you'll need more length
to make it all the way around. Also here, I have five 9.5-inch pieces of 4mm
x 6mm link chain. I have two 6mm x 9mm oval jump rings, two 8mm x 12mm oval jump rings,
and a lobster clasp. For tools, I have just chain nose pliers and also about a 20-inch
scrap of bead-stringing wire you will find very helpful.
So the first thing we're going to do is open up one of our smaller jump rings and just
put an end link of each of these five black chains on it. Close it up. Make sure it's
nice and securely closed, and then repeat to add your other smaller over jump ring to
the end links on the other end. Now if you do decide to make this a larger
size for a man, make sure you up proportionately the length of the smaller chains and go for
making them longer than you think you might need. You can always take off some of the
links at the end if it's way too long. But it's a lot easier to do that than to have
to add some back on. Next, you're going to make sure that you have
your chunky link chain laid out nice and flat. That's very important. And then we're going
to use this scrap of bead-stringing wire like a needle threader. I'm just going to slide
one wire through here and have it folded in half and this will pull the whole thing right
through our chain. And you're just going to weave this wire up
through one link, down through the next, and repeat all the way down your chain, just making
sure that you keep your chain nice and flat, and untwisted as you go. And if I was going
to make this for a guy, I would probably use an even bigger chain here, like a curb chain
probably something straight not so twisted. Just something a little bit more plain and
less fancy-looking. But, I suppose it depends on the guy.
So there. And now, just hold on to this chain and pull our little multi-strand of chain
through. Just hold on to the end one and gently keep pulling this through.
Once you are there you can take out your scrap of wire, you're done with that.
Next, we're going to open one of our larger oval jump rings. I love to use oval jump rings
because the split is on the side. So when something's pulling at the ends, there's no
way it's going to slide through the split. And now, you just want to catch your chunky
chain and your small jump ring in there. And also pop on your clasp.
So if you had to up the size and you find that you cut these chains a little too long, now
would be the time that you would reposition this jump ring and then cut off the excess
links. But, I think this is just about right. So now I'm just going to open my other large
jump ring and slide on the small jump ring and my chain. And it's as simple as that.
So, a rather cool masculine chain. Now I had thought to dress this up a bit. I thought
this was kind of interesting but I thought it would be really pretty with a strand of
crystal beads going through. I still think it would but I didn't have any beads smaller
than 4 mm and these are just a little too big. So if you have a strand of little, bitty,
like 2 mm crystal beads I think those would be pretty mixed in with one of your chains.
And you would just string it like we often do with a crimp and crimp cover, and a wire
protector and string on your beads. What I did down here, I was planning to do
this but these are just too thick, I just put a temporary crimp on the end so that when
I was stringing, I wouldn't lose my beads. But that's something you can experiment
with on your own. So here's another look at the bracelet we
made today. I think you could have a lot of fun finding variations for this one - different
sizes and finishes of both chains, adding strings of beads, or strings of suede cord
throughout. Have fun and make this just the right thing for you or as a gift for someone.
Thanks so much for watching Keepsake Crafts' videos.
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And check out my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net, where I have lots more creative ideas and
inspiration. And up on the screen are two more bracelet-making videos you might like
to try. Happy creating. Bye-bye!