Lately, I’ve been making jewelry pieces out of plastic swizzle sticks. I go to lots of tiki bars and have quite the collection of them. Some are quite pretty.
A genius idea recently struck me. I remember back in my teens making one of those toothbrush bracelets. You’d buy one of those cheap clear plastic toothbrushes, pluck out the bristles, put it in boiling water for a few minutes to soften the plastic, and then bend into the shape of a bracelet.
Why not do it with swizzle sticks?
My biggest concern is the durability of the plastic. It’s kind of brittle and the swizzle sticks are much thinner compared to a toothbrush. I know with my luck, I’d catch the open end of the bracelet on something and snap it in half.
Any ideas on what I could do to improve the durability of the bracelet? I was thinking coating the back with super glue or a 2-part epoxy, as long as it would be something that wouldn’t cause skin irritation.
First, I love that you frequent numerous Tiki Bars! Your bracelets sound really fun! I wonder if you couldn’t pair 2 or 3 of them together and then seal them together.
I would love to see a pic of your tiki bar bracelets!
Here’s my first attempt at trying to turn some into a bracelet. I think I need to use a heat gun to soften the plastic some more and a better way to shape the bracelets.
I like the idea of somehow putting several together. Maybe with wire or glue.
I have tried doing this with old plastic knitting needles, but after several hours, they started straightening again. I look forward to your experiments to see if it can solve my own problems!
I’m also trying to get some information about the swizzle stick polymer from the manufacturer (Royer). They make most of these swizzle sticks. I’m a chemist by education and if I can hone in on the plastic melting / softening temperature, I think that would be helpful.
That’s what I was thinking. Right now, I just put all of the swizzles, inside the tiki mugs in my collection. But this would be a fun thing to do with duplicates. The charm bracelet in the picture is of all things Atlanta tiki. I want to do another that uses swizzles from all of the various tiki bars and events I’ve been too.
Another thing that was suggested to me on a different forum, was to mold the swizzle into the bangle shape, but then cast it in a resin bracelet mold. I’m thinking that would work too. Or even get some cheap, larger plastic bangles, and glue the molded swizzle onto that. So many possibilities. Thanks for all of your suggestions!!!
Or make a mold of the flat swizzle stick (probably with a backing to make it thick and wide enough to be strong), cast it in resin, then bend into bangle shape when partly cured. You could make dozens!!!
Or just one or two if you use recyclable mold material like the glycerine/gelatin mixture.
