Cross Knot Design!

There's a simple but pretty pattern that I often use if I'm making a bracelet for a friend or to sell which can easily be made more exciting through the use of a charm or lots of different clours being incuded with in the bracelet. All you really need is material such as wool or yarn or I normally use embroidery floss and scissors since this design isn't hard to do. It will be even easier if you do use a clipboard but it isn't necessary. So here's how you make it:

• Cut yourself two lengths of your chosen material. To be totally honest I'm not sure how long the lengths have to be as I normally measure mine from my thumb to my opposing shoulder.
• Fold the strings in half and at the half point and tie a knot so you have a smallish loop and the rest of your string's are loose. You can use the loop to tie it when you have finished the bracelet.
• Keep the colours together and chose one of them to knot first.

• Place the strands over the other ones in the shape of a four. I have shown just two strands in the diagrams just to show you how its done.

• Pull the strands that you have just made into a four under the other strands and back through the previously made loop. This will make your first knot. In a normal friendship bracelet this would be half a full knot but just forget about this for this bracelet. 

• With the other two strands repeat the above steps. Make sure the strands don't swap places when you do this as it will make the bracelet twisted.

• Keep repeating these steps until just before you reach your desired length. 

• When you have stopped knotting you can finish it off how ever you want to but I tend to have a strand of each colour and twist them around each other so you can put one through the loop and knot it tightly with the other one. 

So I hope this is easy to understand and the pictures aren't to bad, but if you have any questions feel free to ask. Have fun!

Anchor Tutorial

I've been looking for good tutorial websites to get some better ideas as I've not been doing to well with interesting designs recently and I have found some good photographic tutorials instead. There's one that I really love with an anchor holding it together since I have a strange love for anchor jewelry at the moment. Unfortunately I'm not sure where the photo came from or who created it. It also isn't very good quality so I do apologise for that.

From what I gather you use six strands of two different colours that knot through the anchor hole and you just plait which makes half the bracelet and then you do the other half coming from the hook part of the anchor. I particularly like this design as there's so much different styles you could do as well as using different charms. I guess you could use any sort of stranded material as long as its flexible and thin. Enjoy!

Skull Bracelet!

Hey! So recently I've been quite busy making new bracelets and there's one that I'm quite proud of as I have tried to make it before and completely failed. But anyway, it's a skull bracelet with a toggle clasp on a piece of leather cord. It sounds a bit weird but personally I think it looks quite nice. Oh, and ignore the bad quality photo but I have to wait awhile before I have anything good to take one with.

So, as you can see it's a simple design but quite attractive with the one skull and no other decoration. Its made from leather cord, toggle clasps, a purple skull charm and coil spring ends. I had to use flat nosed pliers to get the coil ends on the cord and on the clasps but that was it really. So here's how I made it:

• Firstly I measured cord around my wrist to fit perfectly as the clasps do add some length on. You can just cut the cord with normal scissors as its not very thick.
• Next I got my flat nosed pliers and put the end of the cord in the open end of the spring coils. I squeezed the end of the coil shut over the cord so it as tight enough for it not to come it even with a good pull. This was the part I struggled with when I originally tried to make it but if you start with squeezing the very end of the coil and work your way slightly up, that should make it easier.
• I then put one part of my clasp through the hoop part of the coil. I opened it up with my flat nosed pliers and closed it after I slipped the hoop through the clasp through. I did this with great difficulty as I think I used the wrong type of pliers. I would say try to use the round nose ones but I'm not 100% sure if they would be easier or not.
• At this point I just slipped the charm onto the cord and did the last two steps but with the other spring coil and remaining half of the toggle clasp, and there is your bracelet!

Just a quick note, I didn't put down any of the sizes of the toggles and coils as I don't actually know the sizes I used. I brought mine off a market stall awhile ago so I cant really remember unfortunately, but, if you have any problems or want to know the best places to get the equipment and cord etc. then feel free to comment and I'll get back to you asap. Enjoy!

Hey!

Hey guys! I'm starting this blog just to put my ideas out there, even if no-one sees, but its just going to be different bracelets I've made and other good ideas I've seen out there. They will mainly be friendship bracelet related in some way but with a few tweaks to maybe give inspiration. Most of the designs I do will either include embroidery floss, leather, waxed cord or cloth so they wont require much to make. Since this is just a hi, I'll just show you one of my favorite designs I haven't quite got round to making yet on friendship-bracelets.net (great website by the way). Pattern #73305 http://friendship-bracelets.net/pattern.php?id=73305 

 (I do not own the photo or anything to do with the website)

Thanks and I hope you enjoy (and excuse the cringyness)