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 this knotting cord macrame bracelet and this one here I made with the dark neon variety and I'm gonna make another one now with the bright neon collection and its the smaller size of the knotting cord we carry in the neons. It's a .80 millimeter wide cord and it comes with all four colors on the card just like this. So it's really handy gives you a really nice variety of colors I'm getting use a macrame board I do find it helpful. You can also tape your work to your work table or use a clip board or safety pin it onto your pant leg.There's a lot of different tricks and ways to do it but I'm going to use the macrame board I'm going to use two pairs of chain nose pliers a pair scissors, so tape, E6000 glue. I'm going to use a post-it note to put the glue on. Then you're going to need a couple of jump rings, a magnetic clasp and some ribbon ends, ribbon crimps and these are 3/8 So to start cut two 3ft pieces of each color of your cord I'm actually just gonna measure them right on the macrame cord, it has a ruler right on there. It's handy and it does knot so be careful it's knotting cord and its good at what it does I have one piece of pink I'll use that one measure to my other pieces. Okay and these don't have to be exact on the length you're going to have a little bit extra depending of course on how long you make your bracelet just get them kind of all close to the same length. Gather all of your chords together at one end. And the way that we place these when we tie it in a knot is going to make a difference where the colors sit in the pattern we want to make it symmetrical a few inches down from the top and I'm going to get the cords placed in a symmetrical pattern so that there's 2 of 1 color in the center and then 2 of the next color flanking all the way out so that is symmetrical on both sides and it's not going to stay necessarily exactly in that order as you tie the knot but as long as its close it'll be alright I'm going to just tie an overhand knot a few inches down from the top I'm going to leave a few inches here leave at least a couple inches after the knot because that's what's going to happen to the notch on the macrame board and if you want to pull it down to where the edge of the knot rest right above this line here then you can measure right on the board using this as your first inch and so on so again don't cut this so short in the back so you can't get it down where you want it to be now I'm going to try to get my cords back into the order that I had them in. Like I said if it's not exact its okay we're gonna end up cutting that knot off at the end it just kinda needs to be close to where they are now we're gonna do all of the knotting for this bracelet using square knots. We do have a video on how to make macrame from a square knots but I will go over it here also briefly you gonna take the left half of your cords and make sure that they're in the color that you want. You're going to use the outer two cords to tie a square knot around the inner two cords. A square knot is always going to have two knots to make up the square knot and we're going to start by taking a left cord and going under the center two cords and then taking the right cord taking it underneath the edge of your first cord and go over the center two cords and through the loop on the left pull that snug and near the top but don't yank it up too tight. We want to be able to have another knot sit right next to it. So with that one we took the left cord under to begin and now to make our knot sit nice and square and straight we're going to take the left cord over this time. We're going to alternate, every square knot alternates. We're gonna take our right cord over the tail of the first cord, under the center cords and through the loop on the left and make sure that your center cords don't get twisted. Pull that snug that's our first square knot. Like I said it's okay if it sit a little bit down from the overhand knot. I'm just going to take the left cords and bring it over to the side. You can stick them in a notch on the macrame board if you want or you can just let them hang out of the way. Now make sure that your cords stay in the right order on the side so that your colors are symmetrical. On this side because we want it to reflect from one to the side to the other so that it looks nice and even we're going to do our knots in the opposite orders. Instead of starting under, we're going to actually start with the over take left cord over the center cords the right cord over the tail under the center cords and though the loop you wanna pull that up to sit right next to the knot above and then we're going to do under the center cords under the tail, over the center cords through the loop pull that snug and now you should have your two knot sitting side by side and your center color should be jogging out to both sides and back in. Now we're going to connect those two by taking just the center four cords, take the last two to either side now those two centers are going to be your centers for the next knot and then you're going to make this knot, you're going to start with going over the center cords over the tail, under and through, pull that snug up to the join right there then take the left cord and go under the center, under the tail over and through and pull that snug. You're gonna follow this exact same process to continue you can see you'll be making your two knots, one knot, two knots, one knot and the outside cords follow along on this nice little loopy edging. I'll show you that again. Start with the left side your left knots are always going to start by going under and complete that knot. You don't wanna pull your left cord super tight here. You wanna go ahead and leave enough cord to give yourself a nice little looped edge. Just pull it snug. Then you're going to finish your square knot by taking your left cord over and finishing the knot. Then you'll do the right knot and the right knots are always going to start by taking your left cord and going over the center cords and try to make sure that you have them even on both sides so that the two knots sit right next to each other and finish the square knot by taking the left cord under the center cord if you don't alternate, if you just go over every time or under every time, what you're going to get is a macrame knot that twists as it goes it's a spiral effect. So it can be very pretty but that's not what we doing to achieve this look and then when you're doing the center knot you're always going to start by taking your left cord over and finish the square knot by taking the left cord under the center cord just like you can adjust to get the top of your first knot right on that line you're gonna continue your knotting until your knots and don't include the overhand knot but your actual macrame work measures about 1 1/8 of an inch less than what you want because your clasp and everything is going to add about that much, a little over an inch for me I want to do this until I have about six inches or so of knotting so I can get the right fit. You wanna go ahead and measure your wrist and then depending on how loose or tight you want you can make it anywhere from half an inch to an inch or so more than your wrist measurement here I have my knotted work and its just under six inches because I want to go ahead and have my finished piece be about seven so with the 1 1/8 that it will add this is going to be just about right so once you have you're knotting the length that you want go ahead pull it off of your board. We're going to use some cellophane tape going to don't pull really hard but just pull the cords at the end into a nice straight line lay the tape down right next to the edge of the knotting. When you flip it over and then go ahead and fold the tape in and when you fold it in you wanna condense the cord a little bit, they're going to fit underneath this ribbon crimp and so you want to fit, so you wanna to check it if it's not quite tight enough you can pull it up again and just fold it tight so it'll fit. If you have tape hanging over the edge you are going to want to trim that off because we're going to actually leave the tape underneath the crimp inside you don't want to have tape hanging out just hold the crimp up and make sure it's gonna fit I'm going to trim the tape. You wanna make sure your tape is right up against the knots because you only have the space of the depth of the crimp here to hold your work in trim that off check to make sure that's going to fit, that's gonna be fine We're going to add some glue to reinforce that and make it really strong. Put a little bit of glue onto a piece of scrap paper take the end and dip it straight into the glue I don't want a huge amount. I just want to get a little bit of a coating on both sides and place that into the ribbon crimp. If you have a lot of access glue you're gonna wipe that away you shouldn't put on so much that you have a lot. Now we're going to crimp to ribbon crimp using a pair of pliers. Make sure it's in the right spot and push down. I usually like to go from the top and then from each side. That's really secured once that glue dries it's not going to go anywhere now we're gonna undo the knot that we did at the very beginning. If you're having a hard time getting it out, this cord doesn't like to come unknotted you can start with taking a couple of the cords out individually and that will loosen it up now that we have are going to do exactly what we did on the other side. Take some tape lay your cords flat line the tape up against the edge of the knotting flip it over, condense it in. I'm going to the excess off make sure it's still going to be sticky make sure you don't have the edge of the tape hanging off side check that and it's good a little bit glue and I'm just checking to make sure that I put the teeth on the same side because I'll let that be the back, the teeth in the crimp and crimp because the crimp is going to hold this I'm keeping on working without letting the glue dry all the way if you're worried about it you can let it set up first otherwise you can trust to the crimps to hold it in place until the glue dries it's up to you, okay we're going to take a magnetic clasp and a couple of jump rings open a jump ring grasping to either side of the opening and twist it apart and place the magnetic clasp on there it's going to be fidgety, go ahead and let it sit against the edge of the pliers and then hang one of your ribbon crimps and twist the jump ring close use the other one to attach the other side twist that closed Then you'll just wanna let your glue dry thoroughly before you wear the bracelet for at least about an hour and you're all done. 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