Upcycled Jewelry for a Birthday Gift

I planned to make some earrings for my sister-in-law’s birthday, so it was time to rustle through my huge collection of beads and the old jewelry everyone passes down to me for upcycling. I came across some rectangular glass beads in purple that I put aside, and then I came across a necklace with assorted types of purple beads. I thought the leaf shaped beads were nice.
I removed the bar end of the clasp to get some of the leaf shaped beads and as I was removing them, I realized there were way more beads than I needed for just earrings and that I could just rearrange and shorten the necklace into a matching bracelet. It ended up as a lovely set and Joann was really thrilled with it.

I save plenty of old gift boxes, so I had a nice one for the jewelry. But being an avid recycler, I try not to buy new wrapping paper too often. Since I was already working on recycling old wall calendars into gift bags for other birthday gifts, I decided to just use a calendar page for gift wrap. I chose one that was a fairly lightweight paper with a pretty photo of a field of flowers and mountains in the background. So, if you’re ever in need of a small piece of gift wrap (even if you don’t horde old calendars for their pictures) you can always look through the months of your wall calendars that have already passed, it works great.