creative jewish mom

How To Make Homemade Jewelry With Your Kids

Creating homemade jewelry with children is both a fun activity and a great opportunity to cultivate creativity, improve fine motor skills, and strengthen family bonds. Engaging in arts and crafts allows children to explore their artistic sides while learning basic skills in design and construction. Furthermore, the pride in creating something by hand can boost a child's self-esteem and encourage a more profound appreciation for handmade items. With beaded friendship bracelets now all the rage, your teens might like to join in the fun too! If you would like to make DIY jewelry with your kids of all ages, read on for great tips and info to make the experience a winner!

Rubber Band Fishtail Jewelry Crafts Are Perfect Summer Take Alongs!

Summer is here, and it is time to get crafting, us included! Things have been lacking in the creativity department around here, I'll admit, so it is time to get back to doing the things we love, like basic crafts with recycled materials, drawing, painting and other simple yet so satisfying creative endeavors!

My ten year old, who is one of our resident crafters, was also apparently feeling the lack of creativity and decided to secretly busy himself with making some simple jewelry with silicone rubber bands, you know the rainbow loom type of rubber bands, only you only need two fingers for this one! And we all had to laugh when he showed up at dinner the other night dressed up as a mafia type figure, wearing a track suit, dress shoes, his hair slicked back and the jewelry, too too funny!

So, whether your kids want to make some of this jewelry for play acting or even to wear, its a great little craft as the supplies fit in their pockets, or in your purse.  And perfect for car or airplane trips!

How To Make A Rubber Band Fishtail Bracelet, or Necklace:

Instructions: You will need small rubberbands and c clips or plastic jump rings

1. Place a rubber band around your two fingers. (My son actually uses three fingers.) Twist rubber band in the center to make a figure 8 around the fingers, such that rubber band crosses in the center.
2. Place a second rubber band over your two fingers. Do not twist.
3. Place a third rubber band over your two fingers. Again, do not twist.
4. From your first finger, lift the bottom band over the other two rubber bands, and over your finger, as if to take it off. Repeat this step on the second finger.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until desired length.
6. When you are finished, add two more rubber bands to the length. Slip the bracelet off your fingers and remove those two bands, this will leave loops for you to thread onto the jump ring.

Now as far as that ring, the make the "diamond" my son just described to me how he added extra rubber bands, but I'll have to get back to you on that one, enjoy!

Elegant Macrame Beaded Bracelets, Who Knew?

This past Shabbat we had a special visitor, a young woman from New York who I watched grow up and now she's watching my kids grow up! She happens to have great taste in jewelry and was sporting the exact same bracelet you see on the upper left. I was so surprised to see something that was actually macrame and looked so gorgeous and dressy on account of the marcasite and other beads. On close examination I figured out how it was made except for one small detail, how they glued the ends of the slider piece. I looked up the bracelets, which are called shamballa bracelets, and found a great tutorial which shows that the ends are melted, since nylon cord is used, why of course!

Here's the tutorial on You Tube for making these bracelets and it's really so simple I thought I'd pass it on to you all. Certainly a great thing to get started on for holiday gift giving and the type of jewelry that while hand made looks amazing. One small suggestion— do use marcasite beads as in the bracelet on the left, it gives the piece a lovely weight, as the marcasite beads are comparatively heavy, being that they're stone.

If you live in the US, and you'd like to buy a bracelet, my friend bought hers on line here, for a reasonable price and no this is not a sponsored post, just passing along what I think is some great jewelry making info.

Enjoy! 

 

 

DIY Rhinestone Bracelets For Wearing And Crafting!

I don't know whether you caught all the buzz about friendship bracelets this past summer, but I sure did, and have had the supplies on hand to make some. Well not really the same ones that were all over the web, but just a bit similar. I was inspired by this great post, wherein I learned about the existence of rhinestone chain (where have I been?) and thought of the project here. Then sure enough, some other crafters beat me to it and made bracelets just like the one you see here.....you can check out their lovely version here.

In any case, I really didn't make these bracelets to wear as bracelets, this was supposed to be just a starting point for another craft project, but they truly look so great as bracelets that I just had to share them with you as is!

You'll Need:

• thin bangles
• rhinestone chain
• yarn or embroidery thread

How To: You basically just bind the rhinestone chain to the bangle with either yarn or embroidery thread. The embroidery thread looks lovely and delicate, but it's a bit time consuming, so I then thought of using yarn, which is what I'll certainly be using if I need a few more of these for some upcoming projects. Enjoy! These make great little gifts and teens can certainly enjoy making a bunch of these for friends.