DIY Charm bracelet garland

by Kathleen Ballos

If there’s one thing I love making, it’s a fun garland. For today’s project, I made a giant DIY charm bracelet garland inspired, of course, by vintage charm bracelets! I love the idea of making this to decorate for a DIY necklace or bracelet making party, or even as permanent décor in a girl’s bedroom. Shop around your craft or dollar store for fun shapes to turn into the jumbo charms–coming up with cute ideas is half the fun! Keep reading for the full instructions.

Materials:

White poster board (or gold paper found here!)
Wooden/Styrofoam ornaments and shapes, found at any craft store
Acrylic paint, you can find a good basic set here
Paintbrushes
Clear tape
Ruler (We LOVE this one)
Pencil
Scissors
Hot glue gun or stapler
Gold spray paint, good option here

1. Measure and cut out 1 1/2″ by 10″ strips from the white poster board. (Or if you have gold paper or cardstock, use that instead and skip step 2!)

2. Spray paint your paper strips gold. I’ve found that most gold spray paint has great coverage, so it shouldn’t take much paint or too many coats. Once the first side is dry, flip and paint the back of the paper strips too. Let dry completely.

3. Use the golden strips to form a classic chain link garland. I ended up using a stapler to hold them together because the hot glue wasn’t sticking well to my spray paint, but if you’re using gold paper hot glue is a good option.

4. Paint your charms! I started by giving them all a coat of gold spray paint, and then I added details with acrylics. Blank Christmas ornaments are great for these, or use any lightweight shapes you can find at your craft store. It helps to do an image search on “vintage charm bracelets” for some inspiration too. Let dry.

5. Use masking tape to secure your golden chain garland onto your wall–I did a sort of zig zag shape. Use clear tape to attach your charms onto the wall behind the gold chain so that it looks like they’re hanging from it. Most of my charms already had string loops on them, but for the ones that didn’t I either taped them as is to the wall or added a loop myself.