ICE Necklace

We did a bunch of traveling this fall.  Since we were going to be hanging out in airports, I decided to make my 1 year old an ICE necklace.  In case you don't know what ICE is - it stands for In Case of Emergency and it has my cell number on it just in case she somehow escapes and gets lost.  Not that I expected her to attempt a prison break, but you just never know what a toddler will do.

I went to JoAnn and found a great little bead kit with lots of letters and numbers, but I wasn't really a fan of the colored beads in the kit so I picked some turquoise beads that were about the same size as the letter beads.

I first tried to use the elastic string that came with the kit and made her a bracelet.  First - her wrist was so tiny that I could barely fit my phone number.  Second - she wore it for about 2 minutes before she broke it and the beads went flying everywhere.  Fail.

Soooo, I went back to my high school bead jewelry days and broke out my fishing line, twist clasps, and lighter which I had packed away in one of my arts and crafts bins.   

I strung the beads that I wanted on to the fishing wire and tied several knots on each end onto the twisty clasp.  Then I used my lighter for like half a second to melt the knots so that they couldn't untie.  You do have to be careful not to heat it for too long or it will make it weak and break easily. 

The necklace was big enough to actually put ICE call and my phone number.  Much better.  I figured that if she was lost, someone might actually look at her necklace thinking her name would be on it and find my phone number instead.  Luckily it wasn't needed, but it did give me some peace of mind when we left her with relatives and stuff.  And it was quite cute :)