DIY Personalized Initial Wine Charms

Doesn’t this look like it says “Briole” instead of “Bride”? Sigh!

My BFF is getting married this year and she asked me to be her Maid of Honor! I’m excited for all the responsibilities I will be in charge of–minus the Wedding Speech. For the Bachelorette Party, the bridesmaids and I decided on wine tasting in Napa Valley. Classy, huh? After we picked the location, I started browsing Pinterest for ideas on decor, favors, and party games. Because we will be in Wine Country, I decided it would be best to work around the wine theme and toss in her chosen wedding color (blue, green, teal). One of my first projects is personalized wine charms for the guests as party favors. I don’t have the exact list of girls that are coming just yet but I went ahead and started with getting supplies for the endless list of favors I have in mind.

What are wine-charms you ask? They are small rings that hook onto the stem of a wine-glass to help wine-drinkers differentiate between each wine glass. This ensures that people won’t mistaken someone else’s wine glass for their own. This is a great gift for any wine-lovers you know. It’s also nice to give as a house-warming gift or for friends who love to host parties. Or in my case, it’s great for a bachelorette party as favors. I differentiated each charm with each girl’s initial but if you are making a handful of wine-charms for a house-warming gift, you can pick different colored beads for each wine-charm.

Here are the list of items needed to make these wine charms:

This picture was taken after I finished up my wine charms so I started off with much more 16-gauge wire than what is shown above.

– Memory Wire
– Jump Ring (you will only need 1 per wine charm)
– 16-gauge wire (7ft. I found this shiny turquoise wire at a clearance bin at Walmart)
– Glass E-Beads 6/0 (40g container – you can pick whichever beads you like as long as they are big enough to fit through the Memory Wire)
– Round Wire Pliers with Cutting Edge (can be found at any crafts store)

To make the Initial Wine Charms, you can find a script font that you like and type out the letters you want to make to use as a guide. I basically unraveled the 16-gauge wire as I went along so I didn’t cut the wire before starting. I started with the letter J. I clamped one end with the pliers and made a swirl so that it would not leave any “rough” edges. If you look closely, you can see areas where the wire pliers scratched off the nice turquoise color leaving the raw wire underneath. To prevent this from happening, you can wrap tape, ribbon, or paper around the round wire pliers to give the pliers some cushion to prevent the pliers from leaving marks.

Make sure whatever letter you make has a loop/swirl so that you can attach a jump ring to it.

After I finished the initial, I cut off about a 2/3 of one “ring” section of the Memory Wire so that the wire had about an inch of space before it overlapped itself.

Then with the pliers, I bent one side to create a hook. Because it’s called “Memory” Wire, it has a tendency to bounce back to its original shape so make sure you hold it in place for a few seconds longer.

You can see how torn up the wire got. To prevent this, wrap the pliers with paper/ribbon/tape–anything to cushion the grasp.

 Then I used my pliers to gently split open the jump ring to loop the charm through. Use the pliers to close the jump ring to secure your charm.

I threaded 10 of the clear Glass E-Beads onto the Memory Wire, added the jump ring attached with the initial, and added another 10 clear Glass E-Beads. 

Then to keep everything from sliding off, I used the pliers to bend the end of the Memory Wire 90 degrees from the other end. This is so you can hook the two ends of the Memory Wire together creating a linked circle. 

One end is bent towards me while the other is bent in towards itself.

Happy crafting!