There were a few key pieces of ‘jewellery’ that were must haves when I was a kid (keep in mind I’m using the word jewellery in the loosest sense of the term here). Practically every girl in the grade had them – they were like rites of passage, especially for declaring your bond with your bff.
One such item was the friendship bracelet, of which I’m happy to say I had several (I guess it helped that we could make them ourselves – low cost is key when you’re in primary school!). The other was the best friend pendant, which sadly I missed out on. Cue sad child tears here.
I like to think I didn’t own a best friend pendant because I had no money to buy one (and not because I had no friends!). Either way, there’s nothing like making up for lost time and so here I am, crafting up some pendants in preparation for Galentine’s day!
Do you know a few gal pals that love to craft? Get them in on this project and then share the pendants out to cement your friendship! 😉
Materials
- Best friend pendant printable (see the end of this post to download)
- Shrink plastic sheets
- Scissors
- Hole punch
- Jump rings
- Jewellery pliers
- Chain or cord
Step 1
Download the best friend pendant printable (at the end of this post) and print it onto a shrink plastic sheet. Make sure you use the correct type of printer for your plastic; mine was made for an inkjet printer, but you can get sheets for laser printers too.
Side note: The hearts will look light when first printed, but the colours will darken quite a bit when the pendants are shrunk.
Once you’ve printed out the file, cut out each of the heart pendants with a pair of scissors.
Step 2
On each heart, you’ll see a thin white or black ‘crack’ running down the centre. Cut each of your pendants in half down the middle, using the line as a guide.
Step 3
Punch a hole in the top of each half-heart with a hole punch. Don’t worry if the hole looks a bit large, it’ll shrink in size along with the rest of the pendant once you bake your plastic.
Step 4
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to shrink your best friend pendants. My shrink plastic needed to be laid on top of baking paper and placed in a 150° celcius oven, but the directions for yours might be different so make sure you check before baking.
Step 5
Once your pendants have shrunk and cooled, use a pair of jewellery pliers to insert jump rings through the holes you punched in Step 3.
Step 6
Feed a chain through each jump ring and your necklaces are ready to hand out to your gal pals!
Although the traditional best friend necklace was the reason I came up with this project, as you can see you don’t have to stick to making necklaces with this printable. I decided the pizza and rainbow hearts would make great earrings, and you could also whip up a bracelet using one (or many) of the hearts as charms.
Get your kids involved too – they could help you craft and then take their heart creations to school for their friends!
Best friend pendants printable
xx Steph