Spring is on its way! And what better way to celebrate than making craft bracelets with the kids? Springtime means green, and what is more "green" than recycling? Instead of throwing your candy wrappers away, or even into the recycling bin to be turned into other things by manufacturers, why don't you turn them into something yourself? Below we share with you how to make a pretty little bracelet out of Dum Dums wrappers. Who doesn't love the classic charm of Dum Dums? The construction of the candy bracelet involves three main parts: Prepping, Folding, and Linking. Then there is the optional fourth part, "Decorating." We've broke down the directions here to make it easiest for you to understand.
NEEDED SUPPLIES
- Scissors
- Glue (hot or super, but hot works the best.)
- Optional: extra doo-dads like buttons, sequins, and/or beads for gluing on after
How to make it
PREPPING
- Unwrap your Dum-Dums. We do not suggest eating all of these, at least not right away! Unwrapped Dum Dums can be placed in plastic sandwich baggies to keep them fresh. You could also work with Dum Dums wrappers that you have saved up, but it may take a while to save up enough to make a bracelet. Also consider which colors you want to go into your bracelet. We chose lovely, bright, springtime colors.
- Cut your wrappers in half. You should cut along the longest part of the wrapper. To get the most precise cut, fold the wrapper hot dog style, crease, and then open it up and cut along the crease. Each half of the wrapper will be one link.
FOLDING
- Fold your cut wrapper hot dog style. Crease the edge so that it is nice and crisp. **Hint: Go over the edge with your fingernail or a pair of scissors. It isn't necessary, but it will make for the nicest crease.
- Open up the wrapper once more. Now fold the edges on both sides so that they match up with the crease that you made in Step One. Try not to overlap the edges, but bring them right to the middle. Once you have done that, refold the crease you made earlier. You should have a long skinny wrapper.
- Fold your long skinny wrapper down hamburger style. (This should be easy to tell, because it is way too skinny to be folded hot dog style now!) Make a crease.
- Just like you did in step two, open up the fold you just made. Once more, bring the edges to meet the crease in the middle. As always, make sure you are making nice, crisp folds! Now refold the crease in the middle. This is one link.
- Continue these steps with the rest of your wrapper-halves to create as many links as you need for your bracelet. The number of links you need really depends on the size of the wrist in question, so once you have made and linked (see directions for linking below) a few, you can measure them up to your wrist to get an idea of how many you need.
*To give you a rough idea, our bracelet was for a smaller wrist, and was of a little under 30 links.
LINKING
The instructions will make sense to you once you have the links in your hands. It's sort of something you have to figure out while you are doing it.
- Insert the two prongs of one link inside the folds of the prongs of another link. Pull it through. If you did it correctly, you should have a "V".
- Continue to add on links until the bracelet is long enough for you. The bracelet should have a zigzag pattern, as shown in the final image below.
- **Tips: You will notice that it can be difficult to insert the prongs, especially, if you insert them in the wrong holes. If you take a pair of closed scissors and insert them into the holes first, you will know that it's the one that goes all the way through, and the hole will be opened a little wider.
- Also, you need to add one link at a time. If you put together separate links and then attempt to put them together, this is not going to work!
- Once you finish getting your bracelet as long as you want it, take your hot glue gun (or super glue) and add one drop onto the end of your bracelet, then simply attach the other end! Or, if you would like to make it removable you can attach a jewelry clasp to each end.