We’re making the most of the very last day of the summer holiday today, so I’m just popping in with a very quick idea: how to make easy friendship bracelets. I remember there being a friendship bracelet craze when I was a teenager and spending lots of time knotting and knotting and knotting to make some. The traditional way to make a friendship bracelet is too fiddly and time consuming for most under-tens, so here are three easy techniques for younger children to make a bracelet to share with friends.
How to make a friendship bracelet from drinking straws
First up is an idea (from B) to make a friendship bracelet from drinking straws. This design is great even for preschoolers – perfect for fine motor practise. Start by making your Bead Station: B customised an old tissue box, creating small compartments for each type of bead.
The beads themselves are made from cutting up drinking straws with scissors – easy peasy, and great fun for kids who love snipping. Use an assortment of colours and sizes, including some stripy ones, to make lots of different beads. Then all you need to do is take a 30cm-ish piece of thread, tie a knot around the first bead and start threading.
The kids can follow a repeating pattern if they want to (sneaking in some maths skills) or create whatever design they like. Once you’re finished, tie a knot in the other end to finish off your bracelet. You can then tie it around your wrist with a bow, making it easy to take them on or off when you want to.
How to make a friendship bracelet from thread
The technique is B’s easy version of a classic friendship bracelet. I started to show her how I used to make the 8-threaded knotted version and her eyes began to glaze over! Her version is just as pretty but much faster to make.
Take eight lengths of embroidery thread in your favourite colours (around 30cm) and knot them all together. Split into two sections, with four threads in each and tie them in a knot. Keep tying knot after knot and your bracelet will appear.
Once it’s the right length gather all eight threads together and tie a final knot using them all. Done!
How to make a friendship bracelet from salt dough beads
Finally, if you hop over to Make and Takes you can find my post with details of how to make a friendship bracelet with salt dough beads.
Happily shared with teach preschool’s fine motor ideas and for the kids friday and it’s playtime and kids get crafty and ABC and 123
puppyloveprincess says
05/09/2011 at 6:46 pmso cute! i love the idea of using straws 🙂
Rashmie @MommyLabs says
05/09/2011 at 8:15 pmCathy,
Love these ideas – so very doable and yet so pretty and upcycle-able.
Incidentally, my daughter too made somewhat similar bracelets with wool but we call them ‘rakhi’ as they are meant to be tied on the brother’s wrist for a festival we call – Raksha Bandhan – a celebration of the sister-brother bond… !
You can have a look here:
http://mommylabs.gorgeouskarma.com/art_craft_projects_kids/handmade-rakhis-for-raksha-bandhan-for-the-brother/
Barb @ A Life in Balance says
07/09/2011 at 6:44 pmI remember making friendship bracelets in high school. I still remember pinning the beginning of the bracelet to any available pillow and working on them for hours. Well, maybe not that long.
Cathy @ NurtureStore says
07/09/2011 at 6:48 pmHi Barb, what I remember most is sitting with one pinned to the knee of my jeans. 🙂