Wire Rimmed Hot Glue Gems / Charms

Okay, so maybe you can officially call me the crazy gemstone lady now :) I have yet another way to make gemstones and charms for you! You can use them for costumes, pins, jewelry and more.

I made an Instructable about Hot Glue Charms before, so you can consider this an upgraded version.We are adding wire, which allows you to control the shape of the hot glue more. To make bigger charms is also easier this way.

• hot glue sticks (the clearer, the better!)
• hot glue gun
• wire
• wire cutters
• paper, aluminium foil, paint, etc. (see steps)
• scissors (I like using nail scissors)

Optional:

• jewelry pliers
• non-stick surface (more on that later)
• clear nail polish or other varnish
• permanent markers

About the glue sticks

You can find really transparent glue sticks if you look out for them, but even with other glue sticks you can make decent charms and gems:

• If the glue sticks are semi-transparent, you can still make gemstones. The colors will just look a bit more faded, but they still shine through! Detailed designs won't work very well though.
• If you're going to use nail polish or glitter on top of your charm, the glue stick doesn't matter!

First of all, we need to shape the charms with wire. In the pictures I'm kind of "mass producing" round charms. 

I used aluminium wire, which is very soft, so it was quite easy to cut through multiple wires at once.

You can make all kinds of shapes with any type of wire! Just be aware that shapes with corners are more tricky to fill later on.

Now you can place your shapes on different surfaces for different effects.

Aluminium is great, because you can color it with Sharpies or crinkle it. Place the wire on it, fill it with hot glue and trim the excess foil once it has cooled.

The foil can peel off on the back, so I recommend sealing the edges with nail polish. 

An alternative to aluminium foil are shiny pieces of soda cans, which give the gemstones a nice shifting effect as well. And if you follow my tutorials, you know I love soda cans ;)

They can be colored with Sharpies too.

I will say though that this is probably the weakest method, because the metal likes to peel off sometimes.

You can also use different kinds of paper, which works well, but sometimes the paper warps a bit and sometimes it doesn't. I don't really know why.

Anyways, you can really personalize the charms with paper - you can draw, print or paint something or find interesting motives on paper that you have at home. The hot glue also sticks well to paper, which is a bonus.

If you want clear gemstones, just place your wire shape on non-stick surfaces like aluminium foil, silicone or baking paper.

Whether you use a matte or shiny surface will determine the transparency:

• aluminium foil or silicone with a glossy finish will give you more transparent gemstones
• baking paper or matte silicone will give you a more matte finish

If you made a clear gemstone like I explained in the last step, you can use acrylic paint or nail polish etc. to paint the bottom.

By adding a little loop to your wire shape, your charm turns into a pendant.

And you can easily make a ring: Form a ring that fits onto your finger with wire. Then take your gemstone and place it upside down on some tape. Add a dot of hot glue, then press the wire ring into it. Done!

If you want to make a pin from scratch, you can glue a thumbtack onto your charm or make your own pin needle from strong wire.

To close the pin, you can just press the needle into a piece of a glue stick.

The glue gets cloudy the more you touch it, so I like to coat it with nail polish.

If you want to glue the gems onto something, you can use superglue or more hot glue.

(If your charm has a paper back and you're gluing onto paper, even school glue will work!)

Not every charm will come out great, so just keep trying!

And you can use nail polish to fix some charms, or you can hide your mistakes with glitter :)

(Of course you will be left with glitter everywhere, if you're like me)

Thanks for reading this far :) Hope you liked this idea!