Paper jewelry can be made from practically any paper, especially scrap.

To prove this, I set out to make two bracelets from paper that would normally get thrown away.

The paper jewellery you see here was not designed in the way I create many of my other pieces.

Instead of spending time to find special materials for my paper jewelry like I usually do, I simply used what I had to hand to see what I could make.

The orange and green bracelet was created from a very small and flimsy paper bag. It came from a card shop where I bought a birthday card for a friend. As I left the shop with the card in the paper bag you see below, I wondered if I could create a birthday present from the bag.

I'm not mean - I just felt like setting myself the challenge of making some pretty paper jewelry from the most basic paper materials.

So I came home, printed off a template and away I went with my project. The darker bracelet was created by using the left-over template strips.

That is what I love about the printed templates - they are a fantastic time-saving tool. However, once they have been chopped up with whatever you are cutting, the resulting strips become a brilliant, cheap craft resource.

(Click here for another post about an inexpensive paper source.)

When I first got into creating paper jewelry many, many years ago now, I made my paper strips the hard way.

I used to mark out the strips and draw lines for every single bracelet or new set of beads. That was tedious! However, I soon discovered that using ready-made templates made life easier. Click here to find a very reasonable priced template to get you started.

For the bracelet I created from the paper bag, I used a one inch tapered template. First I carefully opened the bag out...

...then I lightly stuck the printed template to the plain side using Stick It re-positionable glue tape - (see right).

Next, I used a metal ruler and craft knife to cut along the template lines.

With careful cutting along the template lines, you soon have neatly cut paper bead strips.

Much easier than drawing lines each time!

And I ended up with these - the building blocks of paper jewellery...

...a set of strips from the paper bag and a set of strips from the template.

Once my strips were all cut, I used the technique outlined here on instructables.com  to create my paper bag beads...

...then, I used a technique (that I will outline in another blog post eventually) to decorate and color the 'scrap' strips from the template and then, I created these beads.

The paper I print my templates on is just ordinary A4 copy paper. They are made very strong with the coats of glazing I give the beads and, they are splash proof.

Paper Jewelry from Very Inexpensive Resources!

And here are the results of the challenge I set myself to make a wearable and pretty birthday present from the bag my friend's birthday card came in.

And I made not one but TWO bracelets because I used the template strips too.

Remember, all it took was just one small paper bag, one sheet of plain A4 copy paper, some 1mm black elastic and a few gold beads, charms and split rings from my craft cupboard.

The result was some paper jewellery that was perfectly worthy of accompanying the birthday card that came in the paper bag.

Who needs expensive craft papers to make pretty paper jewelry!