How to: Make a Leather Charm Bracelet

If there is one piece of jewellery that has stood the test of time, and will continue to do so, it has to be the charm bracelet. A truly timeless classic, wearing charms can be dated back to the early days of mankind (see, this blog is educational too!), but the charm bracelet as we know it today emerged in the reign of Queen Victoria. Well, if it's good enough for her...

The main reason that charm bracelets prove to be as popular as ever, is the fact that they can be personalised (heck, everyone loves personalised stuff), and each one is unique to the owner. Here, I've given the classic charm bracelet a bit of a modern reworking, and added some bright blue leather cord into the mix. If you haven't tried making jewellery with leather cord before, I highly recommend it - the end result looks tres sophisticated and high end, whilst the process is delightfully simple. I'll talk you through the steps I used to make this bracelet...

You Will Need:

• Leather Cord*
• Jewellery End Cups*
• Some strong Glue
• A lot of Jump Rings
• One Lobster Clasp Fastening
• A pair of Pliers
• A pair of Scissors
• A Selection of Beads and Charms*

There's a lot of "ingredients" for this DIY, but don't let that put you off - the majority of these are jewellery making staples that will be used time and time again. It's a great idea to raid your jewellery box for broken necklaces that you can steal the charms off too. Use as many, or as few, charms as you like. I think you can probably tell that when it comes to charms, I'm a 'the more the merrier' kind of girl. I've made a multi-stranded bracelet here, so I used about a metre of leather cord, but if you like, you can just have one strand on your bracelet.

1. Cut your leather cord to length using the scissors. I cut three lengths, all just long enough to fit around my wrist.

2. Put a tiny bit of glue into each of your end cups, before pushing the ends of your leather cord into them. Each length of leather cord will need two end cups, one either end. It's worth noting here that if you're planning on adding beads to your charm bracelet, you need to do it before both end cups are on the leather cord. Otherwise, your beads will not be able to fit on the cord. I recommend putting one end cup on, and then threading your beads onto the other end of the cord.

3. When the glue has dried, and your end cups are firmly in place, you can make your leather cord up into a bracelet. I added a jump ring each end, to attach the three ends together. I then used a jump ring to attach a lobster clasp fastening to one end of the bracelet, before attaching a plain jump ring to the other side of the bracelet.

If you don't want to add any charms, you can wear your bracelet as it is - I think both ways look stunning.

4. To add some charms, thread a jump ring through the weave of the leather cord, and close it in place. Either use another jump ring to attach a charm, or clip on a charm with a fastening already attached.

5. Keep on adding charms until you're happy with the way your bracelet looks. Now you can wear your bracelet, either on it's own, or as part of a stack on your wrist.

I found this a great way to spend an afternoon, it's easy enough to do whilst watching TV, whilst still being a really fun little project. Mainly because of the charms - any excuse to spend a couple of hours admiring quirky charms is good by me! I'm going to be trying to get as much wear out of this charm bracelet before the winter (and long sleeves!) set in for good.

As ever, let me know if you try this, or if you have any other projects involving charms or leather cord, I'd love to hear them!

*Some products for this project were gifted to me by the lovely people over at endlessleather