When I was packing up my craft supplies for moving last month, I noticed that I had a lot of jewelry fragments in my stash. I had lots of broken necklaces, bracelets, and pieces of chain left over from previous projects, so I decided to restyle them into a mixed chain bracelet. Since you won’t have exactly the same supplies, here’s a rough idea of how to make your own.

Materials:
Old jewelery/chains in various styles and finishes. At least one or two chains with interesting elements like crystals, beads, or rhinestones
Large lobster clasp
Jump rings
Ruler/cloth tape measure
Needle-nose pliers
Flant-nose pliers (optional)

Methods:
1. Determine how long to make your bracelet by measuring around your wrist, or measure a bracelet that fits your wrist.
2. Use the jump rings and pliers to attach the clasp to one end of a long piece of chain. Lay chain of various lengths and sizes beside the first chain length until you come up with a layout that you like. You can shorten most chain by using the pliers to pry open a link and remove length. Keep the extra chain length in case you decide you want to add links back later.

I ended up using three pieces of chain that ran the full length of the bracelet, five that were about 1/3 of the total length, and four that were about 2/3 of the total length. You’ll just have to play around with your layout until you’re happy with it.

3. Attach half of the clasp to each end of the bracelet using jump rings.  Try it on your wrist and adjust chains if necessary.