Fridge Magnets / Magnetic Necklace

This craft project started a little outside my wheelhouse. An old roommate and a fellow classmate invited me to make jewelry with them. Jewelry? I'm not much of a jewelry person myself, but for whatever reason on this particular day I decided to go for it. 

Maybe I thought wearing a necklace would make me seem... "edgy"? Let's not dwell on this idea too much. The fact is I decided to make a necklace.

As we were travelling to get supplies, I had a thought. Why not make a pendant necklace where the pendant portion could be swapped out for other pendants? That way, the same chain could be re-used across multiple necklaces. This was arguably a great idea, within the scope of what continued to be an overall terrible idea.

We arrived at Michaels (my happy place), and I immediately found a way to make this dream a reality: small paired magnets. By attaching one magnetic pole to the necklace chain, and one magnet of the opposite pole to each of the pendants, they could easily be pulled off and replaced on the chain. Super. I bought these, as well as some wire, a necklace chain, a clasp and other jewelry tidbits that I felt would look cool hanging from my neck. Rad.

Back at home, we assembled our jewelry while listening to some awesome tunes. For the chain, I created small loops of wire and fed them through each end of the chain. To one of these loops I added a clasp to close the chain. I then found the center of the chain (opposite the clasp) and attached one small magnet with some wire. 

I created different pendants by looping a small amount of wire through each loop stemming from a small magnet (i.e. the complementary half to the magnet already on the chain). I used the other end of the wire to wrap and hold my Michaels jewelry pieces, paired with various household items: paperclips, cork, Met pins, metal scraps, thumbtacks, guitar picks, some weird hook-like thing. You know, normal things to be seen with in public dangling from your neck.

I'll skip several steps, including saying how I would wear these every day and the inordinate amount of time I spent in front of the bathroom mirror. 

Eventually, I wore one of these pendant necklaces out to a bar with some school friends. I'm pretty sure I even wore one on an OkCupid date once. Needless to say the whole necklace thing was not well received. 

Maybe in the future they'll look back and say that I was just ahead of my time?

Until that day comes, I've found an alternative use for all of those carefully crafted pendants: fridge magnets.

Materials:
Small paired magnets
Thin wire
Jewelry tidbits
Random household items (whatever you can find that you think would be trendy!)

Necklace chain (optional)

Necklace clasp (optional)

Time commitment: 30 mins for three pendants

Estimated cost: Roughly 25$ 

I have to say, they look much better on the fridge than they do on me.

This is not to say that a magnetic necklace wouldn't look good on you! Be bold and give it a chance, knowing full well that you have a Plan B if your friends start pretending to not know you in public.

Happy Crafting!