Epic Win: Friendship Bracelets
Submitted by D Winter
It’s a shame that crafting isn’t as popular among children anymore. A theme that we’re starting to recognize amongst our epic wins are that toys for children in the past required imagination and creation, versus the video games and action figures of modern times. Friendship Bracelets are a prime example of something very simple that also requires a large amount of imagination and craftsmanship. If you still have a friendship bracelet, post a picture in the comments. We’d love to see all of the beautiful examples out there.
If you don’t have one, perhaps you can make one to show off for us.
I loved my friendship bracelets! I wore a couple all through high school. I remember begging my mom to take me to craft stores so I could pick out unusual colors of floss. I could only make the simple striped kind and envied the people who could make the chevrons, diamonds and other shapes. One cool thing about friendship bracelets was that girls and guys both wore them, so it wasn’t too weird for a guy to make one. You could wear one someone made without it being a big statement about romance or commitment. They were just pretty.
I had a ton of those but my favorite was one I bought in Wildwood. (So, not techincaly a “friendship” bracelet.)
I don’t like them, because everyone else had one but no one ever gave one to me..>_<
I’ll give you one
My sister still makes these all the time. But she has graduated from bracelets to necklaces and rings and little bits which can be attached to all kinds of accessories. The sun room has been taken over by her crafts lol
Oh man I’d love to see that. I can’t remember how to make them for the life of me >.<
I still have a few of these tucked away somewhere with all my memories from childhood in a box at my mom’s place. Now I think I want to dig them out, hah.
I still make these actually… well into my 20s I learned how to make a lot of WAY more interesting and complicated patterns. They take forever, but they’re SO much fun, and can be just about anything you want them to be.
I’d like to see pics of those!! I know how to make them.. but it takes a lot of patience. Not my thing to sit around tying knots all day, but I do still work with those seed beads and make my own beads with Fimo! Yay for Fimo! XD
I love friendship bracelets. We make them on mission trips during the 2 days of 15 hours per day of driving to wherever we were going. I was the only one who could make chevrons and diamonds and fish and stuff, everyone else just made striped ones.
I am… and oddball for my age… i am 17 and LOVE crafting and imagination stuff… and i make friendship bracelets all the time… its rare i don’t have one in progress pinned to my pant leg XD and i give them to my friends all the time
I learned how to make these at Girl Scout camp! I loved them, but after a week, my parents always made me cut them off because they were apparently rife with germs.
YES! We would have contests to see who could keep them on the longest. I NEVER won. I was terrified of germs even at 6 or 7 years old so I would cut mine off in like a day or two.
i loved those! my sister were so much better at making them then me, i just loved wearing them till they rotted off of you!
The quick/lazy way I made them was to take some climbing rope of the desired width/pattern/length(a little overlap), take the little strings on the inside out so it’s just the colorful tube that can be pressed flat, melt the ends enough so they don’t unravel, and superglue it to your wrist. It’s very durable and could last for years. It will look something like this. Not the same as the handmade ones, but if you buy a hundred feet of rope you could make hundreds of them in an hour…that’s a lot of friends.
My sister used to rock at making these. I could only master the really basic ones.
haha, i still make these.
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[IMG]http://i40.tinypic.com/1hs70y.jpg[/IMG]
^ just copy and paste the links
I love these! Thanks for sharing your pics.
Very nice work!
so pretty! nice work. I was never into those unfortunately. I was never, and still am not, crafty.
those are awesome. i like the 2nd on the best.
Rad!
The third one is my favorite.
I made tons of these for everyone in my class!
Man, remember when kids used to be nice enough to each other to do this? Those were the days.
Yeah.. now they point and laugh at the kids that do this.. They’ll get the last laugh when their number 1 line at work is.. “Would you like fries with that?” hehehehe
Oh man I still make these! When you get tired of wearing them, cut them off and they make great bookmarks.
The ones I made involved weaving with your small (pinkie) finger and would come out rounded and looked braided on all sides.
I made one for each of the New Kids on the Block and mailed them to them. Each one had their own in their favorite colors. Never saw them wear them, and I never made them again.
Kitsune make me a friendship bracelet! I have a bunch of bracelets like those, but none made by friends….
I made suncatchers and bracelets with pony beads. Also, I had no friends. I guess I could’ve made them for myself, but that would’ve made me feel worse (lol). I also liked Perler beads until I realized there was no real use for them.
I got into macrame at summer camp. I still do it for my girls. I should teach my oldest to make friendship bracelets (she’s 7). Anyone have good sites for directions for the cool ones? I can only do the stripes.
Get the Klutz friendship bracelet book. That’s how I learned, and it’s got some awesome patterns in it.
I still have the one Lisa Turtle sold to me
I was unpacking a box of my books and I found a book on how to make friendship bracelets. That was about 2 days ago. I might have to make one now…
I still have all my 6 silk thread cotton skeins – you know the type – and tons of specialty designs I made throughout school. I used to be a champion at making these, I even have the book they released in the 90’s for beginners with different patterns
I still make them from time to time for kicks and giggles.
I still make them occasionally-although my hands are in a lot of pain now so braiding the floss or hemp is difficult. So I do a lot of patterns in glass beads now if I’m not working in leather or paint.
Aw man I should make some of these again! I had the book with patterns in it from Klutz. Some of them were so complicated!
Ah! I loved the Klutz press books! I still have some of the old ones that my brother and I had. I think I have some of them memorized. Between Klutz Press and Bill Nye, I learned everything I need to know.
I recently rediscovered my Klutz friendship bracelet book and I’ve been making all sorts of bracelets from it. My favorite HAS to be the totem pole style!
I still wear these. I have two at the moment – checkered and stripey. I love them. They last forever too. XD I remember when I was younger everybody used to make them…..then it just kind of faded out.
Either way, they’re still epic win.
….Also, does anybody have a link or something to more complicated patterns like the ones posted by “i make these a lot”?
I just made some recently!
“Theme that we’re starting to recognize amongst our epic wins are that toys for children in the past required imagination and creation, versus the video games and action figures of modern times.”
This, I’m afraid, is complete foolishness. Every generation always complains that the next one has lost all its good, moral, salt-of-the-earth qualities.
I was born in ‘79, so I was around 10 when friendship bracelets were popular. Yet we didn’t spend all our time weaving bracelets and, I dunno, dipping candles and crafting handmade soap. We also spent a lot of time playing with action figures and video games, and a lot of that play was centered around imaginary, creative scenarios that we made up ourselves. Were there some nights that I stayed up too late mindlessly playing Wing Commander and feeling (despite the fact that I’d never had a drink) hungover? Sure. But that doesn’t mean that video games completely sap kids’ creativity.
Nostalgia’s fun and all, but when we say things like the original post here, we’re really just revealing our own lack of imagination — our own inability to see the younger generation’s unique forms of creativity.
I agree completely. I have a four year old boy, and trust me, there is no lack of imagination when it comes to him and his friends. “Kids today have no imagination/respect/etc” annoys me to no end.
I agree as well. I see tons of ads for all kinds of toys made of reusable foam pellets, or “moon sand,” or lego-ish blocks, or those waxy wire things that you can make into shapes and objects. Heck, there are even Lego fruit snacks so you can be creative with your food. Markers that let you blend colors together to make whatever color you want… none of these are the big-name expensive toys of this generation, but then neither were the more creative toys of the last generation, or the one before that and so on. And if anything computers can let kids do a lot more creatively than play pre-programmed video games — they can make and edit their own movies as well as draw or paint with them. As well, many video games now are much more virtual-reality environments, so you can wander around in them and do all kinds of things, or build things and experiment in any number of games. A few weeks back I downloaded and played around with the “World of Goo” demo, the object of which is to use little sticky balls to build stable structures across chasms, or towers to reach other objectives, but they behave according to real physics and so you have to experiment and build them carefully. That’s just plain incredible!
And a lot more is like that these days…
Haha I just made one of these last month and my friend made fun of me for doing something so oldskool. Joke’s on him now. ^_^
http://home.comcast.net/~wickeddelight/redandsilverzigzag.jpg
This is an 8-strand bracelet. The leftmost strand is knotted twice around the 2nd strand, twice around the 3rd strand, etc. until it becomes the new rightmost strand. Then the same is done with the new leftmost strand. After doing some number of rows to make the zig, flip the bracelet over and do the same thing to make the zag. Omitting the flip step will result in a standard rectangular bracelet with diagonal stripes.
That is SO cool!
They don’t even sell the floss at wal*mart anymore. That makes me very sad, I used that stuff all the time. My little pony customs, bracelets, sewing…sigh.
They don’t carry fabric at walmart any more either, but Joanne Fabrics, Hancock Fabrics, and Micheal’s Arts and Crafts all currently sell embroidery floss. No reason to be sad just because you have to buy them from a different place…?
They don’t sell fabric at walmart, anymore? Where do you live? Curious, because I live in the mid-west, and every single walmart here has both fabric and embroidery thread (what I used for the bracelets).
Oh, I made loads of them! And most of my friends gave two each and I wore them until they almost fell off
Had half my arm covered in those friendship bracelets. I even found out how to add some text so I made bracelets with my friends’ names on them…and for one friend I once made a stars-and-stripes one (that was more than one inch wide!). Still I don’t know if he ever wore it. But as a US Navy Lieutenant I bet he is not allowed ‘fancy stuff’ like that 
Gotta teach my kids (9 and 7) to make friendship bracelets…
I tried to post these earlier but it didn’t work, so here goes again. I do Celtic ones.
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Those are so cool! I have always liked Celtic designs. I recently found out I am Irish through my genealogy so they have even more meaning now. (It is also St. Patty’s day, weird!)
i dont suppose you could send me a pattern of how to make the Celtic ones? my best friend is Irish, and likes a lot of the Celtic stuff anyway…and it would be awesome if i could make her one like that…
I don’t have any on me right now, but I used to make loads and sell them. I still make them. A few years ago my friends and their early-teen daughter were living with us, and I taught her how to make them when she was bored one day. I dunno if she still does though. I should make some more!
I still love friendship braclets and I still make them
I still make these as well and I make them really simple. Just take a bunch of floss and twist it and then fold it in half and let the magic happen! I used to wear a blue one, a red and gold one and a red and white one until I had to take them off for prom. I miss these though.
I used to make them and sell them in middle school lol. Pretty profitable business and it always kept me and my friends in ice cream money!
Wow i still make these. They can stay on for about a year, unless they break and fall off.
actually, my friend and i make these in school. whenever we get bored in class, we work on them. we keep them tied to our purse straps so they’re easy to get to.
most of our teachers don’t mind us working on them, since its quiet, not distracting, and it helps keep us focused.
I used to make hemp bracelets like these with my best friend as a way to earn money, but it got exhausting, and nobody wanted to buy! Makes me wish I lived wherever this person does, it’s probably a better market
I used to make these and sell them. I’d take orders and usually have them all done by the end of the day. It was so fun. I just got better and better.
I still have all my supplies somewhere. Maybe I should start making them again and selling them on Etsy. If only I could remember how I used to do them in 20 minutes like I used to.
I remember making these as a kid. And I remember whole gaggles of little girls working on friendship bracelets at recess. I bet the schools loved this fad.
We worked on them at recess too! And we were so mean, we wouldn’t teach the girls who didn’t know how. We would offer to sell them one instead. But only with certain colors- cuz we would only give some colors to our “BFFs” but when we got in a fight we would demand our friendship bracelets back.
The lil’ sister of my best friend made one to me like… a few months ago ! These little attentions are fantastic. Epic win !
I used to make these for my friends all the time; after seeing this I pulled out my embroidery thread, pinned some to my sock, and started working. It’s like riding a bike.
Oh man, I remember these. I loved them so much! I remember getting together with my friends just to MAKE these, and bead buddies. Anyone else remember going out to get ridiculous quantities of plastic beads to make those?
I am lucky enough to work at a summer camp, so I [still] sport friendship bracelets all year long!
Aw, I can only make like 1 pattern. The twisty thin kind. But it still looks sick!
Wow, I think my best friend made one of these for me years ago. Maybe I still have it.
uhh people still make those
duh
These are so awesome! I came across an old pic of me, and you can see that I have a ton of these on. And the comment about pinning them to your pants leg? That is also an EPIC WIN.
This looks amazing. Thank you very much for posting this.
I still make them! In fact, I just recently started making them! I wear a few everyday, although I always have three on. A pair of rainbow ones tied together (one made by me, the other by my girlfriend), and my bisexual one. SO…good times!
<3 Friendship bracelets!
The kids still make these at the camp I work at . . . I have like a dozen . . .
I so enjoy making these. I just recently started up again, i always loved making designs like butterflies and peace signs. my friends absolutely love them