Zippers and a Little Bling

It's so fun to go through my pictures every once in a while.

I was going through my pics of our trip up the West Coast last summer.
My dad just had back surgery and is down and out for a little while so my
sister had the brilliant idea to put together a digital photo frame for him
with pictures of the family.

As I was going through my pictures from our trip
I found some pictures of some bracelets I made a while ago but never got around
to posting them.

Honestly I'm not sure why.
I love how they turned out.

Plus maybe I need to take a break from pallet projects for a little while.
I've got a major living room redecorate coming soon that has a heavy
dose of pallet wood so let's try something completely different.
I'm like that sometimes.
So here goes.

Forewarning:  This post will be picture rich.

Alright.  Let's go!

I love Zippers!
I love the fun funky design of some of them.
The cool industrial metal ones.

While brousing through SAS in Phoenix,
which is my proverbial 'kid in a candy store' place,
I wandered over to their zipper section.

Big ones.
Little tiny ones.
Fat ones.
Colorful ones.
Separating metal ones.
Chunky plastic ones.

All for so cheap.
The zippers I'm using here cost me $0.25 each.
Seriously.
$0.25 each.
Awesome.

When I saw them I knew they would be perfect for bracelets.
Kind of an industrial meets steampunk effect.
Fun and unique.
Perfect.

So I dug out my jewelry making supplies and started putting things together.

A key, a charm and some beads were all this bracelet needed.

Afer I trimmed the canvas tape away from the actual metal zipper.

A few jump rings and a lobster claw closure and it's done.

Easy.

Zippers and charms.

Perfectly cute and fun!

For this bracelet I decided to leave the canvas tape on and allow the zipper to function

unlike the previous one.

I found another set of fun charms.

A heart.

A love charm with definition,

and I made the bead charm with a head pin and some beads.

Then I attached the charms with a jump ring to the hole in the zipper head.

This way I can unzip the zipper if I want or leave it closed all the way.

The ends got a bar clamp and a toggle closure.

This is a great way to finish off the ends of the fabric.

I had to push the canvas strips together a little

to get them to fit in the bar clamp but not too much.

Then just press them closed with pliers and add the jump rings.

Easy peasy.

I think it looks beautiful on my wrist.

Fun dangle-ley charms.

 Fun.  Funky.

Pretty.

Perfect!