Another Charm Break

Last week I packed up and mailed out my 25 charms for the Mermaid's Treasure swap.  I tried working those sliced shells into the charm, but thought it looked too cluttered.  I wanted to include them anyway, since they're so unusual and cool looking, so I dangled a little bead off one hole of the shell, put a jump ring on it and included it in the package as a second bonus charm.

Then I started thinking about the next charm for the bracelet Round Robin.  The theme of the bracelet I have now is Steampunk/Alchemy.  The journal she included with the bracelet was so cool, as you can see below.

Inside, her pages looked aged and were all decorated with gears and symbols as you can see.  Each page was really an envelope that had a folded, lined page tucked inside, for each recipient to write about the charm they created.  There was one for every month of the year.

The charms already on the bracelet included a tiny hand-stitched leather top hat, a pair of goggles with crystal lenses, and of course, a lot of gears, keys, and key holes.  I wanted to make something different from all of these, and her journal gave me the inspiration I needed.  I decided to make a tiny book with alchemical symbols for the pages!

To make this, I used whatever materials I had around the craft room.  I looked for a scrap of leather for the cover, but didn't have one, so I wrinkled up a piece of brown craft paper and painted it with acrylic paint.  I glued it to three pieces of cardboard, wrapped it around, and glued it neatly.  Then I decorated it with the symbol for gold and some pretend writing using a gold gel pen.

I cut, folded, and aged some pages using Distress Inks, then drew some symbols I found by doing a Google search for alchemy symbols.  I even rubbed the edges of the pages on a gold stamp pad to give it that gilded look.

I added two copper loops to keep it closed with a lobster claw clasp, which I hung from a chain attached to the jump ring along the spine. I also hung a key charm from the chain.  Here's the finished charm hanging on the bracelet with the other charms.  Isn't the whole bracelet so cool?  It has such a mysterious and fun aura about it - and it will still have 7 more charm added along the way!  These Round Robin bracelets are fun because you only need to make one charm, so you can spend some extra time on it and make it really special!