How to Make a Beaded Purse Charm

Purse charms are the perfect, affordable Christmas present for every woman you need to buy presents for. They are customizable and don't take that long to put together. You can easily make five in an evening, wrap them up, and present them to coworkers, neighbors or anyone else you'd like to give a gift to. Here's what you'll need per charm:

needle nose pliers
crimping pliers (optional)
25 mm split ring
small jump ring
2 crimping beads
large charm for the end of the chain (I used a pewter Fleur De Lis)
2 to 3 large beads
arrangement of small beads
6 to 8 inches of beading wire

Pick the colors and sizes of beads that appeal to you. Arrange and rearrange on your bead mat until you are content with the design. If you're new to beading, just use a flat surface and a cloth place setting to keep the beads from rolling off the table. Generally speaking you want to arrange the beads from small to large and back to small with a space holder bead in between each one. If you use red and blue, for example, you may want to use large blue beads and small red beads for an accent. You can use black beads in between as space holders. The only rule in hand-crafted designs is to have fun and arrange a color scheme that is pleasing to you. You may also want to customize the colors for the receiver of your hand-crafted Christmas present.

Assembly:

Loop your large charm onto the wire leaving about an inch overlap with the wire.
Put a crimp bead on over both wires as close to the charm as possible and flatten with your pliers. Cut off excess wire.
Start stringing! You'll have to string the first few beads over both wires to hide the overlap if you have much of one. Leave one inch of wire bare.
String another crimping bead, then a jump ring.
Take your wire and make a loop, leaving the jump ring in the loop. String the wire back through the crimp bead so that when you flatten it, both ends of the wire will be contained. Try to flatten the crimp as close as you can to the other beads.
Either trim the excess wire off or tuck it back through the other beads to conceal it.
Fasten the jump ring to the split ring.

There you have it, a quick and easy way to make hand-crafted gifts this Christmas.