With Taylor Swift bringing her Eras Tour to Australia, you might like to join the trend of making friendship bracelets.
Fans and attendees have been making, swapping and collecting different brackets. With one to a couple of hours, you can make your own set of bracelets.
Craft Materials Needed
Bead making is an affordable craft and easy to get started with. You can buy dedicated craft kits or supplies. You can purchase beads and thread from Lincraft, Spotlight, eBay and Amazon.
Look for plastic beads of similar sizes. Don’t forget to purchase letter beads. These are mostly white beads with black letters. But you can buy different coloured letters on white, or white letters on black beads.
Your supply list might include clay beads, pony beads, faceted beads, round beads, seed beads, alphabet beads, and elastic beading cords.
You’ll also need some thread. There are several types of thread to make your bracelet on. I like the stretchy clear string. You can get multi-coloured thread string, but you probably won’t see it as the beads will cover it up.
A beading tray is optional. Some people may prefer to thread the bead on with a needle, but it’s not required.
Planning Your Friendship Bracelet Design
You can spell out a motivational word or your word of the year. You may like to spell out your friend’s name and gift it to them.
If you’re going to a Taylor Swift concert, you might like to spell out an album name, song name or lyric snippet. If you’re going to another concert, then the same ideas can work well too.
It’s your personal preference when it comes to selecting the colours and shapes. You might like to use beads in your favourite colour or select beads that complement your outfit.
If you use smaller, thinner beads making the bracelet will take slightly longer. If you’re after a quick fix aim for the bigger beads.
I like bracelets where the same couple of colours are used in a repeating pattern. For example, you could have a pastel colour scheme and repeated pale blue, pale pink and pale purple. If you’re not feeling creative, then a monotone bracelet with black and white beads can look stunning.
When designing your bracelet, you may like to plan it out on a bead tray, piece of felt or just cardboard or paper. If you need some inspiration, just look on social media using the hashtag # #friendshipbracelets (you may need to sort by recent to see what’s trending).
You may like to use sticky tape or washi tape to secure the ends, while you’re working on it.
You can finish the bracelet with a double knot and cut off any extra string. Some people like to tie them off with a surgeon’s knot. You might like a dot of clear glue or nail polish to secure the knot (but this is optional).
Don’t forget people have different-sized wrists. If you are gifting to someone else, you might like to get them to secure the knots on their own wrist.
Friendship Bracelet Party
Why not make it a Taylor Swift party? You can play some of her music while you make bracelets. You might even like to have a music trivia competition with prizes.
It’s good to make bracelets with a group of friends as you can pool your resources. As a result, you may end up with a greater range of beads to work with.
Cork and Chroma
Recently I made six friendship bracelets at an art class hosted by Cork and Chroma. In the two hours, we were provided with some instructions and everything we needed. We were able to select our beads from a ‘bead buffet’.
Nearby a group of ladies and their daughters brought a bottle of wine, soft drinks, and a platter of food to share. Next to me a pair of teenagers? ate takeaway sushi while making their bracelets.
Buy a Friendship Bracelet
If you don’t feel crafty, then you buy pre-made friendship bracelets from Etsy. You can also purchase craft kits with your fan-themed favourite words and your choice of colour combinations.
