Charm Jewelry Making Ideas

by Rena Klingenberg
(Making Jewelry Now)

Charms with customized images are great components for creating jewelry that holds a special meaning for the wearer, or that appeals to a specific niche market of people.

Jewelry artists sometimes ask me if I know of any affordable ways to get their design ideas or images made into custom charms.

Here are several do-it-yourself ways to design and create your own jewelry making charms.

And if you're making charms for jewelry you plan to sell, you could easily outsource these charm production methods to someone else if you couldn't keep up with the production on your own.

Decoupage or Mod Podge
your images onto charm-sized objects

Scrabble tiles are a nice size for jewelry making charms -
like this one designed by BeInspired Images.

You can create your own custom images or design on paper, and then decoupage (Mod Podge) them onto charm-sized surfaces - such as small wooden shapes, chipboard, polymer clay, bamboo tile beads, Scrabble tiles, etc.

For how-to's, see:

How to Make Mod Podge Charms and Jewelry

Make a Mod Podge Scrabble Tile Pendant.

Charm jewelry making
with photo-frame charms

Photo-frame charms are available in all shapes, sizes, and materials. You can fill the frames with your own custom images.

You might even create a small collage of related things, then print or photocopy as many of them as you wish (making your own digital collage sheets) to fill a batch of photo frames.

Stamp metal tags
with your designs or words

Infinity Stamps is a good source for custom metal stamps
with your unique images and / or words.

You can have custom metal stamps made for creating your jewelry making charms, and order blank tags to stamp yourself.

Ready-made, charm-sized metal jewelry tags come in a variety of sizes, shapes, finishes, and metals:



Alternatively, you could turn hardware items such as washers or copper sheeting into charms to stamp.

See my tips and techniques for using metal stamps.

Make jewelry charms by
stamping metal clay or polymer clay
with custom rubber stamps

Virginia Vivier created this piece by
stamping her custom design on metal clay.

Virginia shares her sources and techniques for this type of project, in her tutorial Clay Stamps - How to Design Your Own.

You can roll out your clay and use oiled rubber stamps to imprint designs, pictures, words, etc. into the clay.

For charm jewelry making, you can either create clay circles, ovals, etc. first and then stamp them, or stamp a rolled-out sheet of clay and cut out around the custom shapes with a knife to create the charms.


Infinity Stamps also makes custom clay stamps
with your artwork.

Transfer photos onto clay
for charm jewelry making

Photos transferred onto polymer clay by Cindy Lietz.
This technique can result in wonderful, personalized jewelry charms.

For this method you create jewelry making charms by printing your custom images on a photocopier or laser printer, and transferring them onto polymer clay.

You can start by creating any designs you like using pen / pencil / paint - or computer, camera, or copyright-free images (Dover Publications has a ton of copyright-free images available very cheaply via clip art, books, etc.).

Then use your computer or a photocopier to size the images to suit your charm jewelry making project, and print out or photocopy your images.

Finally, you transfer the images onto your polymer clay. See Cindy Lietz's expert tutorial on How to Transfer a Photo onto Polymer Clay.

Make your own shaped molds
for metal clay or polymer clay charms

Kimberly Crick creates her own clay molds
for dolls and charm jewelry making.

Molds enable you to make really creative, three-dimensional charms for jewelry making.

You can easily make (or have made for you) custom molds in any design and size. Then use them to make your own 3-D charms.


Polymer clay leaf charm / pendant by Cindy Riordan.

See Kimberly Crick's fantastic tutorials:

How to Make Molds for Clay Jewelry

How to Use Your Clay Molds.

For metal clay charms, see the video How to Press Metal Clay Charms.

Plastic "shrinky"
charms for jewelry making

Jewelry making charms created with
the shrink plastic method, by Nancy Dorsner.

For ultra lightweight jewelry making charms, you may want to consider using shrink plastic.

You can draw and color your design on the plastic with Sharpie markers, then cut out your charms and punch an appropriate hole in them, and finally put them in the oven to shrink and thicken.

Shrinkies can be intensely colorful, and made into any size or shape. Be sure to apply a sealant over the colored side of your finished charms, to keep the ink from rubbing off during wear.

See Nancy Dorsner's tutorial for recycling a bit of #6 plastic from a to-go container into shrinky plastic jewelry charms. (You can also use commercially-made sheets of shrink plastic designed for crafting.)

Acid etched
metal jewelry making charms

Virginia Vivier also acid etches her custom black-and-white images onto metal shapes to create pendants and charms.

See Virginia's tutorial series on Acid Etching Metal Jewelry.

What else can we use for
jewelry making charms?

Rena Klingenberg
Making Jewelry Now