taking old jewelry and turning it into new pieces

I wanted to make a post about this because I do it so often. Being the sentimental person that I am, I never threw away any of my childhood jewelry. Or, you know, those types of cheap jewelry that you're given as gifts that you'd never wear? All of that is perfect for refashioning into great pieces, you just have to be able to see the potential. If you don't have anything like this lying around, you could also just go out and buy cheap jewelry ;) Or Claire's has racks of 10 for $10 discount jewelry all the time, just think of all the things you can make with ten different pieces!

This necklace above was a product of 5 different bracelets. It was inspired by this Anthropologie necklace. I love yellow and blue together as a color combination and looked at it and thought, "hey, I could reproduce something similar to this with things I already have!"

You know those power bead bracelets that were popular about 10ish years ago? I have some that I still keep with my bracelets, but then I have others that are stretched out and just not right, so those went in a bag with my crafting supplies. They are make up of great beads, the problem is that there's just not a lot of them in one bracelet alone. The yellow one was fine for the bottom, but there wasn't enough in the first blue one that I chose for the sides. So I took a cheap plastic blue bead bracelet, and I added some of those beads in there as well to have the length I needed. The round metal beads are from a cheap Christmas-themed bracelet. And finally the metal beads with the designs were from another bracelet. 

See all the potential in that old jewelry you'd never wear as is? You just have to see it! This is meant to be more of an inspiration post than an actual tutorial. I'm all for saving money whenever I can with my supplies so I do this all the time.

As a final note, I have a collection of chains as well from necklaces that I took the pendants off of. Easy! I also have a couple bracelet chains that had charms that I just took off with pliers. Now it's a nice plain chain and the possibilities are endless. And some of the charms would even look great on other pieces in different contexts, so they're definitely worth saving.