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When I was a little girl, my cousins and I used to make friendship bracelets with wild abandon. We’d load up on embroidery thread and borrow those friendship making pattern books and all kinds of other friendship bracelet accessories to make each other bracelets. Being the young aspiring entreprenuers we were, we also wanted to sell the friendship bracelets in hopes of making some money. Alas, we never did make millions from our friendship bracelets, but I was thinking of them today and how even now they are still popular.

I think back to our friendship bracelet making days and I realized it wasn’t so much the wearing the bracelets as it was the making of the friendship bracelets that provided a great creative outlet and way to share time together. I don’t remember any conversations word for word, but I know we had some pretty good ones while we were choosing our colors for the friendship bracelets and teaching each other new design patterns. In honor of me pointlessly reminiscing about my childhood, I decided to put together some friendship bracelet resources in case you ever decide to make one for somebody you think is special.

Friendship Bracelet Materials

• Thread: There are plenty of things you can make friendship bracelets out of. We used embroidery floss, though of course you can also use lanyard (it’s like a plastic lacey material) or even plain regular yarn.
• Tape: Tape is good to have to tape the end of the friendship bracelet down while you weave the friendship bracelet pattern together. Alternatively, you can tie a loop into the one end and then use a safety pin to pin it to your jeans. (I think we did this one more often since sometimes the tape would come loose!)
• Beads and Charms: You don’t have to add beads or charms to your friendship bracelet, but they can make them even more special than a plain woven friendship bracelet. I’ve found eBay is a good resource for getting these kinds of things in bulk and cheap if you’re a serious craftster.
• Organization: While it’s not a must-have, you should really try to organize your friendship bracelet making supplies in some sort of container that lets you sort by color or materials. I used cheap one like this as a kid, though there are plenty others to choose from!

How to Make Friendship Bracelets

Making friendship bracelets is relatively easy to do. All you need is to take whatever colors you choose and then knot, braid, or weave them together.

One of our favorite friendship bracelets was the topsy turvy bracelet. Basically, you start with any 3-4 colors that you like. You take one color strand and then make it so it crosses over the other strands to make the number 4. Loop it over and continue doing this until you’re ready to switch to the next color.

Weaving friendship bracelets is also relatively easy to do, since basically you just start with one color on the end and then weave it through the other strands. There are fancy patterns and designs you can make, but that’s best left for someone with a video demonstration or how to make friendship bracelets book.

Friendship Bracelet Books

Since I couldn’t find many websites about friendship bracelets, I thought I would include a few books you can get inexpensively from Amazon or see if they are available from your local library:

Have any friendship bracelet making tips or resources you would like to share? Any good memories as a kid making these? Feel free to leave them in the comments below.