Easy DIY Rhinestone Jewelry

I love making jewelry. When my friend Kim took me to a bead show last year, it was an instant love kind of thing. I had no jewelry-making tools, I had no experience and I had no idea what I was doing, but I still came home with a 20-pound bag of random beads. I bought so many that I haven’t even used 25% of them in spite of the fact that I feel like I’m using them all of the time!

But while beading is fun, I really prefer other jewelry-making techniques like braiding and I’m looking to get into macrame but I do have a bit of an issue. It’s one that I don’t talk about a lot and it’s actually something I’ve never even mentioned on my own blog…

A few years back my dominant right hand was seriously damaged. The worst part is that I have limited grip which makes some projects I see and long to do a total impossibility for me. But I’ve never been one to accept being left out, so I decided to work up something that I CAN accomplish gimp hand and all!

So while I loved the idea of making a bracelet like the above, I couldn’t do it the way all of the tutorials showed to. So I had to figure out a different way, where I didn’t have to hold the rhinestone chain in place by hand while wrapping. This is what I came up with! In the end, I think that a lot of crafty people might prefer this method!

For this project you will need:

• Rhinestone chain
• thin metal bangle or hoop earrings
• glue that dries clear and works with metal (hot glue will NOT work)
• cord, rattail, suede, ribbon (mine is 3mm rattail cord)

Take your thin metal bangle and put a healthy dollop of glue around 1/3 – 1/2 of the outside. I used Aileene’s Fast Grab Tacky glue and that really worked out well.

Take your chain and attach it to the glue. Hold steady until it dries well enough that they don’t try to slip off. I held mine for about 3 minutes and called it good.

Trim the rhinestone chain to fit and finish gluing down. The metal is really thin and a pair of regular duty scissors are all you need. No wire cutters are necessary!

I did the same with some coral-colored stone chains onto a pair of thin hoop earrings. Do the same here. Glue on about halfway, and allow to dry until holding fairly firm. Trim the end and finish gluing down.

To let these guys finish drying all of the ways, I put them on my handy dandy drying rack I made. This thing has proven invaluable since. It only took about 30-45 minutes before the glue was totally set.

Take your glue and put a line of about 1/2 an inch on the inside of the bangle. Place the cord on and set it to the side to dry for a few minutes until it holds okay on its own.

Start wrapping your cord diagonally between each of the stones.

When you make it around turn and start to wrap in the other direction forming an X in between each stone.

When you get to the end, a knot that suckers up and then put a healthy dab of glue onto it. Cut the excess and put another daub of glue on the end to prevent fraying OR, if using rattail, hit it with the flame from a lighter but be very, very careful.

You can’t even tell that we used glue to hold the stones down and make things easier on ourselves!

There she is – a vision of beauty with rhinestones and neon!

In the end I decided to not wrap the earrings. I just liked them too much as is. You can leave them as is like I did, or you can wrap them just like I did the bracelet. Totally a personal preference thing.

I just loved too much how chunky the stones look from the side!! I couldn’t mess up that profile!

So what do you think? Will you take me up on my cheat and make some easy peasy jewelry this week?

Allison

A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.