Woven Friendship Bracelets

I recently got really into making friendship bracelets. I made simple ones in high school and have always loved the aesthetic. I also just like colors and making knots. I came to the realization that I like projects way more when there’s lots of bright colors involved when making the first bracelet. The amount of joy it brought me was so needed, especially considering I was using this as a coping method for a breakup… (Scroll to the bottom for gossip. This is not a trick.)

But back to me. It was important to me to focus on myself and making myself happy for myself, and this certainly worked. I feel love and pride toward myself about my bracelet accomplishments. Please enjoy the fruit of my labor.

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I started with a “normal” style bracelet in rainbow colors. I found the tutorial on youtube because I needed help starting. This one is called Rainbow Hearts Bracelet. It was really easy with only two repeating rows. The bracelet book pattern is #162310. I also make these beaded fishing line bracelets. I got one out of a quarter machine back in 1995. I examined the pattern and learned how to make my own and have made a few for myself over the years.

The rainbow bracelet worked up so fast I was ready to make another one. I thought I’d try an alpha bracelet. I picked this one for no particular reason. It looked easy with only three colors I guess. I chose the colors of the Minnesota Vikings, purple, gold (yellow), and white.

Now that I had a handle on alpha bracelets it felt like the possibilities were endless, and I didn’t have to deal with all that fuss of starting or ending the bracelet, it’s worked in a straight line across. I’ve always loved the hippie aesthetic, which I’ve talked about before. So of course peace signs were next. This time I had to do some math. It turned out the Vikings flowers bracelet was exactly 100 rows long. I would measure my wrist for you but I can’t be bothered to get up right now. (Maybe I’ll update this in the future.) So I added some extra colors and an extra gray row between each peace sign to get to 100 rows. Realistically a number of rows between 90-110 would fit, so it doesn’t have to be an exact number if that’s how a pattern works out.

I was feeling really confident and now it was time to challenge myself and push the limits of string art with more intricate pictures. For some reason I was seeing the purple as blue and didn’t change my mind about it even though I like purple better. I wish I had used a brighter yellow, but I had limited color choices. It still came out really good. I initially made a big mistake on the moon and had to tear out three rows that I had repeated, this was distressing enough that I had to put this project away for a few days to recover.

Enter the princesses. Aurora and Cinderella. This one was so fun and came together really quickly. I made some edits to the pixel art so I felt happier with it. I’m trying to love my child self as much as my adult self and she would have loved this.

I broke up with this friend in a situation that involved them shouting at me on the phone and me begging them to stop calling me. I thought we had been deeply connected for the past three years but it turns out they were just trauma bonding me. Yikes.

I’m learning to be happy and trust myself again. I have some repair to do with my husband, but he’s been patient with me through the whole situation. Also I finally got on some antidepressants because this person convinced me I was crazy and needed therapy to stop “reacting wrong” to them. So thanks for that at least.

I hope you loved all of these bracelets. I’ll have another post coming up where I start writing words on my bracelets, because of course I am. I’m a sucker for words as art.

As always, this is an AI free zone.

Don’t be shy, leave me a comment down below. Love you!