N1

Hiya, Rooks! Today I’m going to show you how to make a charm necklace from…empty plastic containers! This project is proof that you can find inspiration in pretty much anything, because an empty sherbet tub sitting in my recycling bin is what sparked the idea behind it. If you’re like me and love making something rad out of practically nothing, then this is the DIY for you.

What you’ll need:

N2

  • A soft plastic container with pictures or a design that you can easily charm-ify. You’re not necessarily limited to ice cream/sherbet tubs for this, but I find that they’re usually the ones with the cutest art.
  • Small pointed scissors
  • A large sewing needle or safety pin
  • Jump rings
  • A lobster claw clasp
  • A plastic jewelry chain

How to do it:

Step One

N3

Start by cutting whatever illustrations or patterns you’d like from the plastic tub, leaving a bit of a margin around each one. If the package you’re using doesn’t have art on it but you like its color scheme, cut out your own free-form shapes instead! This is what I ended up with when all my pieces were cut out:

N4

Step Two

N5

Cut away the excess plastic around each shape so you’re left with just the printed image.

Step Three

Now we’re going to add jump rings to these little pieces of plastic to make them into charms.

N6

    1. Punch a small hole through each plastic piece with a large needle or safety pin. You may need to run the needle through a couple times to get the opening wide enough to fit the jump rings.

    2. Open up a jump ring and hook it through the hole. Repeat this process on all of your plastic pieces.

    3. Voilà! Instant charms.

Step Four

N7

Your necklace will begin to take shape in this step. Grab your jewelry chain and cut it to your desired length.

Step Five

Next, we’re going to start attaching the charms…

N8

    1. Lay out your chain and charms and determine where you’d like each charm to go.

    2. To affix the charms to the chain, hook each jump ring (with the charm attached) through one of the chain links.

    3. Carefully pinch the rings closed with a pair of jewelry pliers. If you don’t have pliers, scissors work just as well in a pinch.

Step Six

N9

To finish the necklace, attach a lobster claw clasp to one end of the chain with another jump ring.

N10

There you go! Your super-rad charm necklace is ready to impress the heck outta of everyone. ♦