How-to: Lucky Charms Bracelet

This fun bracelet is literally made with Lucky Charms cereal – no joke. My idea for a Lucky Charms marshmallow bracelet came long before I figured out how to make it work. I’ll warn you right now, this project isn’t for the crafting faint of heart. A decent amount of crafty research and development went into this bracelet. I Googled and found a few Lucky Charms inspired bracelets made with clay and glass, but I couldn’t find anyone who’d used actual cereal for a project. I initially shared this project at Mod Podge Rocks last month and got some great feedback from readers who tried this project for themselves and had some tips & questions they shared via Facebook that I’ll incorporate in the instructions below.

Supplies

• Lucky Charms cereal
• Mod Podge Dimensional Magic
• crafting wire (I used 28 gauge, very low duty)
• 2 pairs of jewelry pliers
• small wire cutters
• charm bracelet chain with clasp (I made my chain with this helmsweave chainmaille bracelet tutorial, but you can find similar items at stores.)
• 5mm or 7mm jump rings that match your bracelet chain
• paint brush
• waxed paper
• small plate

Directions

Separate one of each kind of marshmallow from your cereal. Not having eaten Lucky Charms in a long time, I don’t know what all of the moon marshmallows are about. They’re kind of pretty, so I included them in my bracelet for variety.

Count up your marshmallows and cut an inch-long piece of wire for each one (I needed 12 pieces). Then, following the pictures below, fold each wire into a horseshoe shape by holding it with a pair of round nose pliers and bending the ends down with your fingers. Use a wire cutter to even out the length of the ends with a snip. Push one wire horseshoe into each marshmallow. Be careful – marshmallows aren’t super sturdy, what with being food and all…

Lay out all of your wired marshmallows on a piece of waxed paper on a small plate.* Use a paintbrush to paint a SUPER THIN layer of Dimensional Magic (DM) on the top of each marshmallow. Let them dry completely. Facebook commenters reported cracking in their finished marshmallows, which I didn’t run into at all with my bracelet, even after wearing it out several times. As far as I can tell, the issue is that too much DM gets the marshmallows too wet, making them less structurally sound.  Just a heads up.

*The plate is just so you can easily & carefully move your marshmallows to a safe, out-of-the-way locations for let each layer of Dimensional Magic dry. If you just do this on waxed paper, you can’t move the drying marshmallows around without them sliding all over the place and sticking to things: each other, the waxed paper, etc. 

Flip your marshmallows over and paint another thin layer of DM onto the marshmallows. Again don’t use too much DM and let dry completely. Then, carefully paint the sides of each marshmallow, again with just a little DM. The sides are the trickiest part because you don’t want to put too much DM on them and accidentally glue your marshmallows to the waxed paper.

Repeat painting the top, bottom and sides of the charms 3 to 5 times. The more layers you apply, the stronger the seal will be on the marshmallow charms. You have to be patient with this project for it to turn out. The thinner the layers of Dimensional Magic the better. I initially tried to make this bracelet by pouring Dimensional Magic on the marshmallows straight from the bottle, which didn’t work. The marshmallows started to disintegrate, the DM went everywhere, and the wires fell out. It was a disaster, so believe me, slow and steady is the way to success on this project.

3-5 layers of Dimensional Magic later . . .

The hard part is over! The rest is simply attaching the charms to the chain bracelet. Begin by opening a jump ring. The best way to open a jump ring is with two pairs of jewelry pliers. Hold one side of the jump ring steady and push the other end of the ring away from the steady side as shown with the arrows below.

Hook your charm onto the jump ring, hook the jump ring onto your bracelet, and close the jump ring by pushing it back together with a motion exactly the opposite of what you did when you opened the ring. The ends of the ring should be touching to be secure.

Take a few minutes to decide on the order of your charms. I didn’t want too many same-colored charms or too many moons next to each other, so I spent a few minutes rearranging them before attaching each charm to the bracelet.

I was really psyched about how my bracelet turned out! It really wasn’t a heinous amount of work in the end – it just requires a bit of patience and figuring out the right way to apply the Dimensional Magic. Just remember: don’t apply too much Dimensional Magic to your marshmallows! It’s water-based and marshmallows are food. They’re made to dissolve in spit (sorry, it’s true), which is also full of water. Slow and steady wins the race.

Like I said at the top of this post, I first posted this project at Mod Podge Rocks in March. In case you didn’t know, I write a tutorial for Mod Podge Rocks every month. Check out MPR on Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter for tons of craft project ideas.