Stretching the bracelet gift budget for teen girls

Assorted Metal-tone Bangles
from Charming Charlie

If you are looking to stretch your personal shopping budget for nieces, daughters, or granddaughters at Christmas, consider buying bracelet sets and dividing them into multiple presents or stocking stuffers (great for tweens to twenty-somethings).  This works too if you want to help your daughter find cost-effective alternatives for her friends.  Let us say you find a 6-bracelet set for $30.  Depending on the type of bracelet and style, you now have 6 individual gifts at $5 each, or either 3 double-bracelet sets or 2 triple-bracelet sets you can tie together with a ribbon for either $15 or $10 per gift. 

If you want to shop on-line, then check out the HSN fashion bracelet lines of R.J. Graziano or Diane Gilman for sets that can be split up to make multiple gifts.  If the people you are buying for really love color and you want to go with a more traditional style bangle, try the Cloisonne on ShopNBC. These work for any age that can appreciate hand-made painted jewelry.  If you prefer to touch and feel the sets before you buy on-line or in-store, check out your local department stores then watch for sales in the paper or special on-line discounts for the items you liked best.

If there are multiple (daughters or granddaughters) sisters to buy for, consider getting a different set of metal colors for each.  This way they know which bracelet set it theirs, yet can borrow from each other to create great stacking combinations for different outfits and special occasions.  What colors should you buy for each sister?  For the one who loves blue, give silver tone.  For the girl who likes pink or orange or chocolate, get the popular rose tone.  The sister who prefers greens or earth tones will want traditional yellow gold tone.  For the lady who dresses mostly in black or grey, get the new trend of gun metal. 

If your daughter wants to do the shopping herself for her friends, you can let her peruse the shopping sites with you or do a similar split idea by letting her pick from options at Charming Charlie (CC) stores for teens and mature friends (or a smaller store like Claires if you do not have a CC in your town for teens, tweens, and kids).  They can get similar bracelets with the same metal looks or multi-color options in wood or plastic, as well as stretchy bead bracelet options.  Give your daughter a “per friend” budget and let her pick the items to split up.  At this store she even may be able to build a bracelet, necklace, earring set instead of just bracelets using her set budget.  If she and her friends really enjoy shopping together, save time and choose to get them all CC gift cards. (You can give your daughter a little more on a card as a surprise stocking stuffer than what she allows for her friends too.)  With the gift cards, they can have fun in January by all going to the store together and spending hours helping each other select just the right accessories to go with the new outfit they got at Christmas.  By-the-way, you can save stress and time with gift cards, because can get gift cards from most stores on their website and save yourself a trip to another store during the holiday rush. 

FYI - $$ saving note:  If the girls can wait until the end of January or the start of February – they may get more bang for their bucks as many items will move to half-price clearance after the holidays are over.

If you or your daughter is the crafty sort, make a jewelry bag or stocking to hold the gift card or jewelry instead of traditional wrapping.  If you want a similar money-saving idea for women’s gifts, check out my next post.