01/12/2012 - Toy Wire/Faux Pearl Bangle Bracelet

If you have a child who has gotten a toy from any major manufacturer, you have most likely gone through the frustration of trying to get the toy out of the excessive over packaging while your child tries to wait as patiently as possible for said toy. I won't go on my tirade about how much wasteful packaging goes into products, but there are some interesting bits that can be reused instead of thrown away. I have been saving the plastic coated wire (I call it toy wire since I have no idea what it is really called) that holds the product to the box for the last few years now. 


Recycled Material: toy wire
Other Material: jewelry wire, faux pearls 
Tools: long nosed pliers

How I did it: This is another project I just started playing around with before I really knew how it was going to end up. The first thing I did was take two pieces of the toy wire (about 12" long) and twisted them into one piece. I repeated the process to make two of the twisty pieces. I stared at the two pieces for a while and remembered a link I checked from Pinterest that had directions for a bracelet that I thought looked neat: http://craftaytaylor.blogspot.com/2010/10/copy-cat.html. The photos gave me inspiration to make a bangle bracelet along those lines, but I may try to make a bracelet like that one another time.

I made a circle big enough to slip over my hand with both of the twisty pieces and connected the ends together. I will say that this was easier said than done. I ended up trimming about 1" off the end of one of the wires on each end of the twisty pieces -- I made sure not to cut the pieces off the same wire. I did this so I could twist the two trimmed ends together to connect it, then did the same thing to the other twisty piece. The next step I took was to string enough of the fake pearls on a piece of wire that was the size of the twisty wire and connected the wire in a circle like the other parts. I had tried wrapping the beads like the CrafTay girl's instructions at first, but it just wouldn't work. I sandwiched the three pieces (twisty wire, fake pearls, twisty wire), held them in place, then began to wrap jewelry wire around all three pieces so the wire laid between each pearl. I finished up the wrapping by wrapping the wire a few times (close together or butted up or whatever the jeweler term is) around and tucked in the end of the wire. 


What I would do differently: I liked using the toy wire, but looking back, it does not contain as much reclaimed material as I wanted and the pearls took over this piece. The good thing is that I still did reuse something that couldn't be recycled.