My LilliBean: Spring Break Fun-Friendship Bracelets

Here's our Friendship Bracelets!!! But back to those in a moment, first...

I'm kind of finding it hard to talk about spring break and Easter when we are in the midst of a snow storm-yep you sure did read that one right, I said SNOWSTORM!

Ahhhh...good old Utah...you never know how late into the year it will snow. It actually snowed the day that we brought my oldest home from the Hospital...he was born in June.

Not to mention that I seem to have picked up a cold...not fun.

(I liked the Springiness of this box of Kleenex...made me smile)

Despite these hurdles, I am resolved that almost nothing will derail my BIG plans and I'm managing to forge ahead with most of my Spring Break goals! (go me!)

Wednesday I did manage to start that new project, and man is it giving me trouble! If I can figure it out though it will be well worth it! I've got my fingers crossed that I can get my head clear enough to tackle this bad boy! I can't reveal what it is (mostly in case I fail...) but I will say it's a hookie project. I did manage to finish up a few other projects however and I'll reveal those in post to come in a little bit.

Thursday a little postponed, but the kids and I did tackle a fun craft project, that I'll share in a bit, I worked on that big project of mine until my medicine head almost exploded... I finally had to just give up and sleep.

Today has been mostly dedicated to family day (hubby's day off), and thinking of Easter craft plans for tomorrow, and mostly working on the living room organization (update to come in a bit).

Thursday, I drug myself off the couch long enough to have some crafty fun with my little monkeys! I decided even if it wasn't Spring outside, I wanted to do a Springy/Summer craft project. I thought of warm sunny days, thought of outside fun, all of which some how in my twisted mind came back around to Friendship Bracelets! Of course! Such an obvious choice!

So here are my little monkeys hovering around the counter, we gathered up all the necessary friendship bracelet making supplies; yarn, string, scissors, needle, beads, a crochet hook (2.25), and happy smiling faces, and got to work.

I decided to do a name bracelet and then a few yarn bracelets. We started out with the name bracelets. I had on hand a package of letter beads from the craft store,

I had them each go through and pick out the letters to spell out their names, and a few heart beads.

I decided that since I'm not really into tying and untying these bracelets on three little arms over and over, that I'd construct them to be kid friendly and easily fastened and removed. To do this I fastened a pony bead to one end and left a loop on the opposite end to fit snugly over the pony bead.

Here's the process:
First, measure the wrist you'll be working with, just so you know how long you need the finished product to be. For my little ones (5,4,and 3) the magic number was 5 inches.

After which you'll want to cut a piece of string, I used crochet thread (#3 in black) for this project. You don't want to cut it too short or it will be too hard to work with. To make it easier for myself I cut it at 18 inches. Now you get out your trusty (2.25) crochet hook, pull up a loop on your string, leave the loop, but pull out your hook,

grab a pony bead, thread it over your loop like so...

Now insert your hook back into the loop between the loop and the pony bead, and continue on to make a chain.

Now this part is really up to you, you'll want to adjust the chain longer or shorter depending on the length on the name you are spelling and how many beads you are using and how long a bracelet you need. For this example, C.A.R.S.O.N and a heart bead, and a 5 in bracelet I chained 5.

After you get your chain where you want it, end the chain like you normally would, but don't cut the string. Switch gears for a second and change your crochet hook for a sewing needle. Thread your hook and this is how you'll string your beads onto the bracelet.

Next you want to pick back up your crochet hook and repeat the process, pull up a loop as close to the beads as possible, and again you'll chain 5 (or the same number you did at the beginning)

When you get to the end and you go to finish it off, you'll want to create a loop and tie off rather than knotting your end.

Keep the loop big enough to fit over the pony bead but small enough to fit on snug so that your bracelet doesn't come unfastened on its own. Make sure your knot holding your loop is tight (square knot works great) and cut the tail as close to the knot as you can
and...
TA DAA!!

and here is a picture of the yarn bracelets we did.

I had them each pick out two colors that they wanted to use (otherwise it'd have been a 20 color creation I'm sure) They are more toward the traditional friendship bracelet, but with a little twist. I would have opted for using crochet thread for these as well and they'd have more of a finished, daintier bracelet but I didn't have any "cool" colors on hand I was told, so we went with yarn, of which I had any color their little hearts desired (of course). They turned out okay, I did two different versions (patterns available here), but I'm still thinking that I'll redo them in crochet thread one of these days.

Here's one last picture of our Friendship Bracelet Creating Fun!