This weekend my (amazing, wonderful and gorgeous) husband took our 2 year old to visit his parents a few hours up the road leaving our 9 year old and I to fend for ourselves for the entire glorious weekend. This was win/win for me in a lot of ways. I got to work uninterrupted on many things I have been putting off (paving the way for some time off next weekend with him) and spending some much needed mommy/daughter down time that she has been craving.

Having a 2 year old around means for lots of  “stop, no, don’t do that, stop whining, don’t hit your sister” conversations and a lot less Kumbaya if you know what I mean.

Charlotte and I took advantage of the down time by going to the movies, eating out, some shopping and of course, crafting.

I love crafting with Charlotte because she is majorly creative. I’ll go in with something specific in my head and she will bust in with 100 other ideas that are just as fun. In this case I wanted to find a craft neither one of us had done before so we were at square one, and I decided to pick up some things to begin jewelry creation. I personally believe she would like it and after we shopped Friday night for some new jewelry and I realized how pricey it was for kids, I knew that we could make something more personal and with overall less cost.

Plus the added benefit of being together was worth it.

Wire Wrapped Rock Necklace

Creating a Wire Rock Necklace is a craft that can be done by a boy or a girl and as long as you have someone able to work the pliers to close jewelry clasps, is probably about age 6 and up. Although young kids can have fun finding the rocks! This is a great GROUP Craft for Girl Scouts, Slumber parties, or Birthday parties. Because the leather and wire is quite long, you will have plenty of product to create over and over again!

To create your wire rock necklace you will need to gather

• Leather cords (available at craft store for about $2)
• Jewelry clasps for leather (by the cords, 2 sets for $2)
• Wire (we used 18 gauge in pink)
• Rocks (we found those outside)
• pliers (needle nose works great, I just pulled a regular pair out of my husbands tool box)

First find some rocks! This can be something all ages can do. Rocks are everywhere…the street, the backyard, your neighbors garden (ok…..don’t do that one) and wash them. You can choose to paint your rocks if you like, although we personally didn’t. If you do paint them make sure they are totally dry. When you go to buy wire, please note the the gauge of the wire will dictate how easy it is to cut. Some wire is thicker and some is super thin. You do not want super thin wire because it wont hold your rock and if its too thick, its hard to bend and cut.

 

Next cut off about 4 inches of wire off. This can vary depending on the size of your rock! So if you want to wrap before you cut, that is fine too! Wrap your wire a few times and around in a few places to make sure its secure and then twist the two pieces together at the top.

Next we went ahead and prepped our leather cord by deciding our length and then cutting. This length will depend on you! When it comes to kids though its best that a necklace can be lifted OVER their heads as not all kids can use clasps. Once we have that set up we opened our jewelry clasps, adding the end of the leather and closing with our pliers. This was my first time doing this and while it wasn’t perfect, it was easy and worked great. If you do not want to do jewelry clasps, you can just tie in a knot just as easily.

 

Great! Now that you have your leather cord ready and your rock all wrapped up, you need to fuse the two. Just add your cord between the wire and twist! Feel free to cut off excess. Once its twisted a few times, fold it back down and twist at the base of the rock.

    All done!!