Printer-friendly versionI love to do activities at parties that result in cool take-home gifts, too. For my daughter's 11th birthday, the small group of friends she invited to the English Equestrian Tea Party were old enough to do a more involved craft than we'd done for previous birthdays. And the small group meant that we could spend a little more per girl (still keeping the price very low and reasonable, of course).
The project we settled on, in the end, was a DIY equestrian charm bracelet. Elegant, perfect for our equestrian theme birthday, but still young and fun for our group of tweens.
Materials for making a charm bracelet:
- silver chain with fairly wide links
- jump rings
- needle nose pliers
- wire cutters
- lobster clasps
- assorted pewter charms
One of the beauties of charm bracelets is that you don't need to know exactly how big the kid's wrist is, and it can grow along with her. That's because with this design, there's a clasp at one end of the chain, but instead of having just one place to connect at the other end of the chain, the clasp can hook on absolutely anywhere along the length of the bracelet. This makes it an especially great project to do with kids. I cut the chain 7.5 inches long (pretty standard adult sized bracelet). The silver plated chain I used was only $1.20 per foot, and the pewter charms all cost less than 50 cents each. Each bracelet only cost about $3.50 in materials, a very reasonable cost for a quality favor and activity, especially for such a small group of guests.
Use the needle nose pliers to bend open the jump rings. Thread the jump ring through the ring on the charm, then through one of the loops on the bracelet chain. Use the needle nose pliers to close the jump ring. Contine adding the charms to the bracelet.
The girls were so proud of their charm bracelets! Heck, I kind of want one. I never quite got over that horse-loving stage of girlhood, evidently.
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