Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
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
