Young Women bracelets

The Young Women's President and I decided we wanted to give something special to our girls at our New Beginnings program this year. It all started with our theme "Testimony...the oil in our lamps" which is based on the parable of the Ten Virgins. I found these cute oil lamp charms at www.charmingldsgifts.com and thought we could make a cute beaded key chain with a bead for each of the 8 YW values. Then I thought, it won't take many more beads to just turn these into bracelets. I didn't know at the time how much bigger it would get. I then decided one little charm wouldn't do because we could fit seven on the bracelet between each value. So we looked at the rest of the charms and decided on six more that we could tie a gospel principle to. After lots of test runs and MANY trips to the store to buy or return beads to make the perfect bracelet, I finally had a cute finished product!





For those who may not know or remember, the 8 values and colors are:

Faith - White
Divine Nature - Blue
Individual Worth - Red
Knowledge - Green
Choice & Accountability - Orange
Good Works - Yellow
Integrity - Purple
Virtue - Gold



We plan to present the bracelet and the oil lamp charm at New Beginnings then have a special lesson or activity to gradually present the rest of the charms. From left to right shown on the picture above (5 1/2 of the charms are seen), this is what each charm represents:

Girl praying - The importance of prayer and continuous communication with Heavenly Father
Crown - Our "royalty" as daughters of God and the importance of our divine roles
Salt Lake Temple - The blessings of the temple including eternal marriage
Heart - The unconditional love our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ has for us
Liahona - Obedience to the Lords commandments and the direction we may receive through the Holy Ghost
Smiley sun - Remember to find joy in our journey here on earth and bring joy to others
Oil Lamp - Building a testimony of our own that we may be prepared at the last day

These ended up costing more than we thought, mostly the 7 charms per bracelet. But I found a new hobby and it is way easy to do. I also have lots of my own beads now to make cute bracelets! Even just doing the beads for each value would be cute. Maybe other YW leaders out there could use this idea for their Young Women too. Enjoy!

Update:
We gave the bracelets to our YW last night and they were really excited about them! I was really worried that they wouldn't care, lose them, and end up being a waste of time and money. As soon as the meeting was over though the girls came straight up to where I had the bracelets and stuck their wrists out waiting for me to clip theirs on. Yeah! They like them and it was worth it!