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Hi this Megan with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show
you
how to make a basic friendship bracelet
and you can use a lot of different kind of cords
but it's the same
basic kind of technique to make bracelets. A lot of people use embroidery floss
I'm gonna actually use S-lon nylon cord
it's a little stiffer
it's shiny, I really like the look of it
it comes in a variety of really pretty colors
you don't need a lot of tools
you just need a pair of scissors
and then you need some way to
fasten this to your work surface
when you're working. I'm just gonna taoe it down to work surface. Some other
things you could do would be to clip it to a clipboard and hold the
clipboard
one of the most popular
ways to fasten your work
is to
put a safety pin through the knot and then put the safety pin
on the
leg of your pants and then cross your legs and work from you leg. It's
really easy that way
but for the purposes of showing you I'm going to tape it to the workspace
just if you are taping, it don't pull too hard, it will slip through the tape
the first thing you need to do is
pick your colors. You can use anything from three
strands
up to
it's kind of
up to you how big
how wide you want it to be and how many threads you think you can manage at
once
you could start with something more simple and then
expand from there
I wound usually recommend starting with
a few feet of
thread or cord
three or four. Somewhere in the middle
I'm gonna use
five colors
and I'm going to
use three
of each color
the
basic
pattern that I'm gonna show you is just stripes
when you use
more than one strand of the same color
together in a stripe it's gonna make the stripes wider
So to do a striped pattern you need to start with
your
strands
in the order that you want before you tie them together
just
choose
which colors you want to go next to either
and put them
side by side in
pairs of two
so go ahead and pull your threads, your cords until you have couple inches
where your pattern is the way you're gonna want
it to work with
just tie regular overhand knot several inches from the end, you'll have a tail to tie with
later
so that your
pattern is still in the right order. That's going to keep it
more tidy
at the top of your bracelet
take some masking tape
tape it to your table or
your work
to you
carefully to your clothing
or a clipboard
find some way to
secure it
you want it to hold pretty well
that you can pull on it a little bit without loosing it up
start with
the color that
you want to go first with which should be over to one side or already since you
organized it first
and start with the left most strand
I like to pull that one to the left and pull the other ones to the right
just to keep it straight in my head
now the knot did you use for the basic friendship bracelet is a
half hitch knot
take
the next strand to the right
your tying strands that you're going to tie all the way across with your, going to go
underneath the next strand to the right so that
you kind of form a four
number four
kind of shape
and then you're gonna bring it
back to the left
through the loop
and then
pull it up to tighten
your tension on this should be
pretty snug
but not so tight that it
makes it
misshapen
we'er going to do a double half hitch
and you can see friendship bracelet patterns that
only have a half hitch knot
you can see some that have a double half hitch knot
I like the double half hitch because it keeps the work from curling
So do the same thing
take it over
through the loop
and pull it up
you're going to
take the same strand that you
knotted with
and you're going to go
to the next
strand to the right
and you're gonna
go ahead and tie two half hitch knots there
and as you work across
your line of knots will slant slightly downward
to the right. That is normal so you don't need to try to shove it all the way
next to the knot
go ahead and and let it
naturally slope downward
that's what gives a nice diagonal stripe look
go
to the next
strand to the right
and you're just gonna work all the way across
with two half hitch knot, the double half hitch knot
on each strand and
pull up
I don't recommend pull up this way too much towards the knot
just pull up and maybe slightly right together nice and tight
if you pull up it might slide you're knot up
on the strand
if you pull towards the
big knot
just keep working across
and remember the pattern that you
put your colors in, in the first place
you should have your
two strands of each color next to each other if you want to have big stripes, if
you mix it up and you randomize your thread
when you're tying you're knot and then just pick whatever thread comes
next
it'll just end up with a
smaller stripe in an random pattern
if you want an even stripe then you take them in order and
if you want a larger stripe you use the two strands of the same color
together
the first row is
the tricky part
because you need to get
the slant establish and after that it'll
fall right
up against the one before it
take you're knotting all the way across until you knot
your thread onto
the last
cord on the right
and then that's going to become the new last cord on the right
and with the SuperLon it's a little
bit slippery. It allows you to adjust it a little bit. You can go ahead and
straighten the line out of your first row to
make it look a little cleaner
and then you're just going to go back to
the left and pick up your new left must thread
and work your way across again
a double half hitch knot
on each
strand across
all right
for the first couple rows you can clean it up
just pushing it up with your fingernail
making that into a nice straight line after the first few rows you won't need to
do that
it'll have a nice shape to it
so you can see that having the two purple cords next to each other makes a nice
thick purple stripe
and then the third
row and then every other row after that you'll start a new
color stripe when you pick that a new color
so it would be
exactly the same, you just pick up the new left must strand
and you just use that one to tie the double half hitch knot
onto that strands all the way across
but this time it's going to have a new color
so it's gonna start that new stripe
it's just gonna start
that sea foam green color
stripe underneath
and it'll just go right in order, so my
next stripe will be white
and after that I have a pink stripe, a fuchsia and then the dark blue
and then it would start over, by the time you get over your colors will
kind of
circulate back through, it'll have a
repeating pattern
and you're just gonna keep doing your knotting
until your bracelet is as long as you want
these bracelets usually
tie shut, a
permanent
application, you'd tie it on
you can play around a little bit with the ideas of clasps and
sliding knot clasps stuff like that but
you wanna have
enough of a bracelet length to
accommodate how ever you're going to close it
other than that just keep knotting until it is as long as you want
so once you have
knotted your bracelet
as long as you want
and don't forget that
you don't need to knot
the full length of what you want to go because you're going to have a knot
connecting the bracelet also
see you don't need quite as much as you think you do necessarily just check it
as you go and see
when you think you're there
once you're all done you can just tie another overhand knot
at the end of your cords
pull that
nice and tight
and if you want to
wear your bracelet permanently
you can just trim your cords
tie a square knot
it's the easiest way
I'm going to show you how to make a really quick
simple little sliding knot clasp on here
cut some of the excess off of the long side. You need a few inches
but you don't need
it to be quite that long
bring around your
bracelet
you're going to
a knot
with one group of
cords around the other group of cords
so just a regular overhand knot
but with the other group of cords passing through the loop
and you want to
make sure that you tighten your knot
a couple of inches away
from where that group starts
so for these cords
have the knot be a couple of inches down the cord
and then you're going to do the same thing to
the other side
bring them around
it's just an overhand knot
and then you want
that knot is for these cords, you want it a couple of inches
down that way
okay now in order to get
these knots to stay in
but not be so tight that you can't slide
your bracelet open and close
I'm actually going to apply a little bit of E6000 glue
and you want to be
pretty careful that
you're getting your glue just
inside you're knot and not onto the other strands or else it won't move
and you want to make sure that when you glue it
you glue there knot shut but not too tight
the idea is that you can pull
to open the bracelet larger and then pull the ends to
close it back up
take a
scratch pad or
a piece of paper, anything that you don't
need
get some glue out and then use a
toothpick or a scrap piece of wire
something that'll give you a nice fine point
to apply the glue
the best way to do that
is to actually go ahead and
loosen the knot just a little bit
and then get some glue
on your applicator
not a lot
just a dab
and like I said be really careful that you're not getting glue on the
strings that go through the knot
just get this glue
on the strings that
make up the knot
and the best thing is
the piece
of the cord that comes out to your ends
if you put the glue
on the edges
of the knot where those cords go in
you'll keep it from
getting all over the the rest of your cords
apply the glue
and then pull that knot
like i said pull it snug but not so tight that it's going to keep it from moving
the glue will really hold it in place so you don't have to make your knot super
super tight as long as it's gonna stay in place
and then go ahead and just repeat that with the next one. Loosen the knot
get a little bit of glue on an applicator
and
where you have your ends coming out
on that same
length of cord, I'm just going on the other side of the knot but it's the same cords
get that
into your knot
tighten the knot up a little bit
and then you can
trim off
you ends. Don't trim them all the way off. You wanna have something to grab onto
if you leave it longer you can tie an extra little knot if you want a knot, you can
leave them
dangling
you can tie little knots on each one
I've seen people
put a knot with a bead on each one. It's up to you how you want to do it
that is
the little clasp that you'll use on there. You want your glue to dry
really thoroughly before you try to use that to wear it
I'd let it dry
over night about twenty four hours
but that way
you can open it up
slide it on and then pull it closed again, it's a little bit easier than
wearing one permanently
and that's how you make a basic friendship bracelet and if you want to
change the pattern up
you can just change the order in which you do your double half hitch knot, you can
take some from one side
instead of having it be like a four, you have it be like a backwards four, you'd work from
the right side to the left
and make them in like chevron pattern
use your imagination once you get a hang of it in do all kinds different
patterns with it