Upcycled Necklace Craft for Kids

Both of my girls love making presents for others. For years they’ve been collecting trinkets and toys around the house and gifting them to friends and family. Lately this passion seems to be reaching new heights with Tinker making me multiple gifts daily, and Lovey making gifts for friends at school. So we decided to make some gifts to share with others in this upcycled necklace craft.

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While the girls were at school one day I quickly prepared the materials for this craft. First I cut out strips of cardboard from an empty cereal box. Then I used a glue stick to securely glue heavy duty foil around all sides of the cardboard pieces. Because you’ll be cutting the shapes later you’ll want to take time to make sure the foil is completely stuck to the cardboard in all areas. You can tell in the picture below that I didn’t get it quite stuck on the piece toward the bottom, so we weren’t able to use some sections of that one for our necklaces.

Once the girls got home they used Sharpie markers to draw lines all over the foil, separating it into individual sections that could be colored and decorated.

Then they went back and decorated all of the individual boxes. This engaged them for so long. They worked and worked and worked to get their pieces decorated. It turned out to be a very soothing after school activity.

When they were done their art looked like this…

Now you have to decide what shape you want your necklace pieces to be. We chose to trace circles that are about 1.5 inches in diameter. Then we cut them out and used a hole puncher to place two holes on opposites sides of each circle.

To make our necklaces we laced the pieces with sparkle cord.  If you place the cord in the first hole from the top and then come up from the bottom for the second hole and continue to do the same pattern then the pieces lay nicely. But if you make a mistake like Tinker did in a couple of the pieces below, it still works out. You can also decorate both sides of the circles so that it doesn’t matter which side of the necklace is showing.

Lovey was very proud of her finished necklace. Her center circle is a picture of her and a friend that she decided to give the necklace to at school the next day.

But first she wore it at home for the evening.

This was really one of our first attempts at some bigger kid crafting, and I have to say I’m really looking forward to all the crafty projects we’ll likely explore as the girls get older.