Grown Up Friendship Bracelet Tutorial

Guess what I found? A tutorial that I had kind of forgotten about! See? My hair was long here! Seeing this pic makes me miss my hair a bit, but it is so much easier to manage at this point in my life (plus, it went to a good cause :). So, back to the bracelet. I was inspired this summer by a lot of bracelets that incorporated silver with string. The string part reminds me of making friendship bracelets at camp.

In fact, one summer during college, I interned at a camp and one of my jobs was putting together the craft activities for the campers. One thing we did was friendship bracelets, and let me tell you, I made so many and helped make so many. Seriously. So I decided to make this one using the “knot” that we used there (since it was ingrained in my mind from doing it so many times!). Adding the silver piece makes it more grown up though, which is why I call this the Grown Up Friendship Bracelet.

What you need:
–Some sort of round/square/etc. metal piece for the middle
– 16″ of string (I used hemp)

1. Cut your string into 4 pieces that equal 40″ each (I made them extra long just to make sure there was enough. You could probably get away with a shorter piece, but I like to err on the safe side).

2. Take each of the four pieces and fold in half. Take two of the strands to begin one side of the bracelet.

3. Place the metal piece on top of one of the strings middle where it has been folded.

4. Pull the “loop” where it is folded through the center and over the front. Then pull the two long pieces up from the bottom through that loop.

5. It will look like this:

6. Repeat with second piece.

7. Now push the very left and very right piece to the sides. These will be what you knot with. The two in the middle will stay in the middle the whole time.

8. To begin the knotting process, take the far left piece and place it on top of the two middle pieces and underneath the far right piece.

9. Now take the end of the piece you just put under the far right piece and take it on top of the far right piece, then under the two middle pieces to come up through the loop the far left piece made (see below pic).

10. Pull tight to create a knot. You will need to keep the two middle string very straight so the other two strings create the knot over them.

11. Now repeat that process, but backwards. Take the far right piece and place it on top of the two middle pieces and underneath the far left piece. Now take the end of the piece you just put under the far left piece and take it on top of the far left piece, then under the two middle pieces to come up through the loop the far right piece made.Pull tight to create a knot.

12. Continue the process by switching sides each time until it is the length you want it to be.

13. Repeat this whole process with the other two pieces of string to create the other side of the bracelet.

 **Once getting it started, I like to put it on something to help keep the strings straight. Here I just placed it on a bottom. Some people clip it to their shoe or tape it to a table with strong tape.**

14. When finished, knot at each end.

15. Decide how you want to finish it. I just tied an extra knot on the left end (see below)

so the right side knot could slip through the two knots on the left end.

Alternatively, you could add a clasp to the ends or create a sliding knot like this here. Now you can make a Grown Up Friendship Bracelet for yourself or as a gift. Christmas is just around the corner you know 🙂