These jewelry making kit ideas include projects for both girls and boys. You might consider creating and selling kits like these as a business, or giving them as gifts, or using them to offer beading parties for kids.
Popular Projects for a Teen / Kids Jewelry Making Kit
Children and teens love to make and wear jewelry. And a trendy jewelry project with a cool name can make a lot of sales!
These are some popular jewelry projects for kids of all ages to make. They are great designs to teach at a jewelry workshop or beading party, or to offer as kits.
1) Friendship Bracelet – for boys or girls. This has been a hot jewelry item for the past several years, with no sign of declining. Nice made with either “natural” beads, or colorful glass / plastic ones, and strung on leather or hemp cord.
2) Friendship Anklet – similar to the bracelet above, except made ankle-size. (Less likely to be worn by boys.)
3) Surfer Dude / Surfer Chick Necklace – for boys or girls. A rustic choker-length necklace featuring a few beads and sometimes a small pendant. You can offer a variety of rugged, “natural” beads like clay, bone, horn, wood, recycled glass, etc. The beads and pendant are strung onto leather cord or rubber tubing, fastened with either sliding leather knots or a basemetal clasp. This is an especially popular teen / older kids jewelry making kit.
4) Princess Bracelet – an extremely popular jewelry making kit for girls. Possible components: large-hole beads to string on a pretty ribbon that ties onto the princess’ wrist with a bow; beads to string on heavy-duty stretch cord; beads to string on beading wire and fastened with a basemetal toggle clasp. Pink and purple are a must in these designs.
5) Dragon-Bone Necklace – a popular jewelry making kit for boys. Simply provide a variety of bone beads and a few interesting spacer beads to string on leather cord and fasten off with sliding, adjustable knots.
6) Magic Bracelet – for boys or girls. An assortment of small magnetic hematite beads in a variety of shapes makes an endlessly fascinating toy as well as a piece of jewelry.
Tips for Creating a Jewelry Making Kit
Many of the commercially-made jewelry kits are disappointingly junky. They have a skimpy assortment of cheap components, flimsy tools, and poorly written instructions – packaged in a deceptively large box. It’s very easy to create something that’s vastly better than these!
When I create a jewelry making kit for workshops or for sale, I put myself in the customer’s shoes – what would be exciting to find in the kit? Here’s an example of how I created some bead bracelet kits:
Each kit contained beads in a popular color scheme, with some nice contrasting accent beads and at least one cool focal bead. I included an inspiring mix of bead colors, shapes, etc., and used a beadboard to measure how many inches of beads I was putting into each kit.
Then I tossed in a few extra inches of beads, so the recipient would have a good selection to design with, plus some leftover beads for other projects. I added a coil of leather stringing cord (cut a few inches longer than even the largest wrist would need), and instructions for good design, a comfortable fit, and making sliding knots.
I packaged it all in a transparent jewelry zip-close bag, stapled my product card to the top – and had a nice jewelry making kit.