D.I.Y. Duo: I'm Sure, It's Charmed

Julia Beizer and her fiance, Tom, guide newbies through basic home-improvement tasks in our pages a few times per month.

THE UPSIDE OF EVERY wine-and-cheese party? The chance to swill delicious fermented grape juice with friends. The downside? Losing your glass. This particular drunkard's affliction hobbles me more often than it does Tom, but there's an easy-enough solution to keep the his-and-hers stems separate: wine-glass charms.

These vino-vessel ID bracelets retail for $12 to $24 at online shops, but the homemade ones here set us back only a few bucks and about 20 minutes. Plus, picking your own beads means avoiding schmaltzy themes or tacky color schemes.

1) BUY BEADS
If each bracelet is going to be a distinct identifier for your dinner guests' glasses, a variety of hues is crucial. Try to find a selection of beads that look alike but vary slightly.
In two examples above, I added secondary beads. The silver balls unify the group of oval charms on the right, while cheerful stars on the left set differentiate the otherwise identical turtle beads.

2) LOOP IT UP
I was lucky enough to score a huge bag of beading hoops — flimsy rings you can open and shut to add beads or fit around wine-glass stems — at a craft warehouse a few years ago. Michaels of Alexandria told me it has a bag of assorted sizes for $3, but you can also fairly easily make your own out of eye pins, which are straight wire pins with loops on the bottoms. Jewelry wire would work just as well, but using an eye pin saves you the trouble of making the tiny loop at the end of the ring.

If you're not using hoops, slide your chosen beads onto the eye pin, then use pliers to shape the wire into a circle.

The turtle and round, swirly beads proved to be a challenge: They were too big to fit on the rings lengthwise. So I threaded each onto a headpin (a wire with a blunt stopper at one end, as on the straight pins used in sewing). I then looped the remaining wire around the hoop and secured it by tightly wrapping the wire around itself. Pinch it hard with some pliers, and you're done.

3) NOTCH IT, NATURALLY
Use the pliers to bend the end of the eye pin or hoop (the part doesn't end in a loop) so that inch of the tip is almost perpendicular to the circle. When inserted into the loop, that notched tip will fasten the pin around the glass.

4) CARE FOR YOUR CORK
Because we can’t resist the crafting impulse, we used the remaining materials to create charms for the corks to cap the rare unfinished bottle.

For the oval-shaped set, I strung a trio of beads on some jewelry wire and rigged that across the beading hoop. For the turtle set, I strung two silver balls on the hoop and used a star bead to fasten it together. And for the blue-green-red family, I strung some jewelry wire through a large blue bead.

I used pliers to fasten each charm to a T-pin, which can be inserted into plastic and traditional corks. So, even when the bottle runs dry, the charm can be transferred to the next one — but your glass will stick right with you.

» SHOPPING LIST
» Six oval beads: $2, A.C. Moore
» Bag of 80 silver beads: $1.67, A.C. Moore
» Turtle beads: $2, A.C. Moore
» Star beads: 20 cents each, Beadazzled (Beadazzled.net)
» Red, blue and green bigbeads: $1 apiece, Beadazzled
» Two-inch eye pins: 50 cents apiece, Beadazzled; or beading hoops: $3 for about 20, Michaels
» Jewelry wire: $3 for 30 feet
» Head pins: $1.25 for 25