How to: Make Plastic Animal Charms

I love anything that can be described as miniature, plastic tat. You know the kind of crap that falls out of really cheap Christmas crackers? Yup, that's the stuff I love. The fun shapes, bright colours and dinky size - whenever I see anything like that I have to have it, because I know I will end up using it for some project or other. My absolute favourite thing to come across is a cheap, plastic, miniature animals, because I love to make necklaces out of them.

This is so easy, yet the results are really striking, probably because every necklace is unique, depending on the plastic animal you choose. The poorer the quality of your plastic animal the better, because actually the plastic is softer to screw or drill through, although I have managed to do this with plastic animals that are rock solid.


You Will Need:

• A Plastic Animal
• Jump Screw
• Pliers
• Necklace
• Jump Ring

Take your jump screw, and using your pliers, gently push it into the centre of your animal's back (or wherever you want the animal to hang from). Using the pliers, screw the jump screw in until only the loop part is showing. If you have a miniature drill you could use this to make a hole first and then screw your jump screw in (although I am the weakest person ever, so if I can do this sans drill, I'm pretty sure you can!).

Using a jump ring, attach your animal to your necklace.

Wowsers, wasn't that quick and easy!?

I like to make necklaces out of mine, but you could follow these same steps to make a charm for a bracelet, or if you have two of the same animal, you could make earrings.


I'd love to see if any of you guys try this! What animal would you use?