I had the idea for these bracelets last year, but didn’t get around to doing anything about them until September. By then nobody’s thinking about something as quintessentially summer as friendship bracelets, so I put them away for today.

Proving that these things are just in the air, I’ve been seeing friendship bracelets everywhere this summer. I love them all, but as a grown up, I need to be able to go from a beachy hobo look to professional at a moments notice. Which means I can’t really wear my friendship bracelets until they turn all grungy and rot away. I wanted the laid back look of a friendship bracelet, with the practicality of adult living.

The secret is tying a little toggle clasp on to each end. Instead of having to tie knots whenever you want to wear them, you just slide the little toggle through the hole, and remove just as easily.

There are tutorials for these all over the web, but here’s mine.

Start by cutting a bunch of lengths of embroidery floss and tying them together with one big knot. Push a safety pin through that knot and use it to anchor it to some surface (a blanket or a pillow, say) so you have both hands to tie your knots. The finished width of your bracelet will depend on how many pieces of embroidery floss you use. You should also cut each piece plenty long enough. I found 4″ of floss to be about what you need to make 1″ of bracelet, if your bracelet is 8 pieces wide. If you make it wider than that, you’ll also need to make your pieces longer.

Take the thread farthest on the left and tie a knot around the thread next to it by looping it around and pulling it through. For my pattern, I tied two knots around each thread.

Pick up the next thread and tie two knots around it, and repeat this all the way across the row. Then start over again with the new left-most thread and tie knots over and over again until your bracelet is the size you want.

Tie the threads together in a knot and cut off any extra, leaving a couple of inches to tie on the toggle closure. I just slipped a couple of the threads through the holes on the clasp and tied little knots.

Making these brought back so many memories. My best friend in third grade, Nicole, and I used to sit and tie knots for hours and hours, including every recess. I plan on making a whole bunch and sending them out to all my pals, now grown up bff’s.

I learned about pre-threaded bead cord from my favorite local bead store, and I’ve become obsessed with it. The great thing about buying it pre-threaded is that it comes on a needle thin enough to get through even your little beads without breaking them. Then you can buy it in a bunch of different colors and sizes to get the look that you want.

Here you can see closer that I just tied a knot at the top and bottom of each bead, and then left about 1/2 an inch between each bead.

When you use fibers instead of chain, there are a couple of different findings you can use to attach it to a clasp. Here’s a bead tip finding where you thread the fiber and then close the metal down around it. Or a cord coil where you smush the coils down tight on a cord. Or as I did here, a cord cap where you use pliers to close those tabs down.

I used this same technique on a larger scale with these great big chunky beads. Since they were so much bigger I could use a ribbon and thread it right through.

Since I was making this a tiered necklace, I wanted to vary the look. Look at how different each strand looks just by changing the space between knots.

Since I was going with several strands of ribbon, and I had all kinds of those triangle jump rings left over, I skipped a traditional finding and just tied the ribbons around the ring. To make it secure, and keep the ribbon from fraying, I melted the ends together.

If this is totally rudimentary for you, just skip all the rest. But I thought I’d add it because when I have taught classes I’ve been continuously surprised by how many people – particularly the teenagers – don’t know how to tie a knot in the end of a thread. So here you go. Start by bringing the end around and crossing it over the thread.

Bring that end under the thread, and through the loop you’ve made.

Start to pull it tight, and use your thumbnail to scoot the knot along to where you want it to end up. This part can take a little practice, but you can always loosen the knot and take a second run at it.

I’ve seen some amazing things made with some really out there fibers. You bring in some of those specialty yarns with the sparkles and the fringe and you can add a whole new dimension to your jewelry.

I’ve been loving the trend lately of the really dominant necklaces. I haven’t found a bib necklace that worked on me yet, so I’ve been following the “dripping with beads” trend. Bear’s grandmother left me a ton of these jet black beads, but they’ve been sitting in my drawer for years. In my necklace making marathon, I decided it was time to address it.

Each of these strands is secured on to one clasp using a crimp bead. This clasp is made for a three strand necklace, but I snuck in a fourth by tying two strands to one of the loops.

I made another necklace in the same style using these crazy white beads I found. They’re enormous, and remind me of Wilma Flintstone. I can’t quite decide if I love it like crazy or think it’s a little ugly. It’s a fine line sometimes.

While it doesn’t use a crimp bead, I wanted to share this necklace here too. It’s another tiered necklace like the others, but this one is light weight so I could get away with just using knots.

The strands are tied together and then threaded through the cone,then tied around the clasp, and the unpleasant ends are threaded back into the cone. The cone doesn’t offer any strength or anything, but it hides all those ugly knots securing everything together. Whenever I just use knots I always make sure to reinforce it with glue.

Now back to the crimp beads. These are really excellent for securing just about anything onto a jump ring, which can then be secured onto a clasp. This is especially invaluable when you use something like tiger tail which is super strong, but impossible to tie knots in.

Thread your crimp bead onto your fishing line.

Then thread the clasp or jump ring you’re securing your line to.

Bend the end of your line around and thread it back through the crimp bead.

Then pull the line tight and crimp the bead closed with pliers.

This is usually the first lesson I give to beginning jewelry makers. It’s the easiest thing to learn for the fastest payoff of fun jewelry.

I loved these red faceted beads so much I really wanted to highlight them. But stringing them all by themselves didn’t seem very special, so I used this really simple technique that sets each bead apart to really shine.

Each bead is threaded on to a wire, and then the wire is bent around to make a loop linking it to the next bead. It’s super easy, and eliminates the need for any other findings besides the clasp.

Along with using it to make the whole necklace, you can also use this technique to incorporate beads and chain. Here I interrupted the chain with those silver beads by making loops on each end to link in place.

I made the pendant in the same basic way, just using a head pin instead of wire. One end is flat so the bead can rest on it while the other end secures it to the necklace.

I was watching TV while I was working on this, and I saw an actress wearing a necklace I really liked. So I made it right then. Just a few simple beads staggered out among a couple strands of chain. This is totally an “everyday” necklace that will be perfect with a T-shirt and a simple skirt.

Bend the wire so that a little more than 1/4″ is perpendicular to the rest.

Use your round nose pliers to bend that end around in a loop to meet the rest of the wire.

Link it onto whatever other piece you want to attach it to, and then close the loop by pressing the end up tight to the base.

Once you get this technique down, you can make just about 80% of the stuff you’d see in the cheap accessory stores. But you can use better looking stuff to do it.

Years and years ago, in one of our cross country moves, the con-artist movers we hired – the same ones who destroyed our china with glee and dodged our phone calls for weeks while we slept on the ground – made off with the box marked “Jewelry”. I’m sure they were disappointed when they opened it and it consisted solely of worthless beads.

Since then I’ve been slowly rebuilding my collection, which is difficult for me to do since I am a cheapskate, who refuses to buy even the cheapest jewelry because I’m capable of making it myself. But I didn’t do it very often. Certainly not often enough to keep up with trends.

I finally decided I must do something, and then I ended up at Michael’s on a day when they had all of their beads on sale at half off. Between what I already had waiting for me to get around to, and the haul I made at Michael’s, I had to start producing something if I wanted to get the drawers to close in my studio.

I have much to show you. I’ll probably have to draw it out for a while. But for today I thought I’d start with the simplest. The necklace in the top photo is just a bunch of beads strung on fishing line. I didn’t have any necklaces that were long, so I just kept threading and threading until it reaches down to my waist.

For this bracelet, I used the same principle. I had a whole mess of these beads passed on to me so I just kept threading until I ran out. I wanted to use this as a bracelet, so instead of just tying the ends together I tied them onto a magnetic clasp. The magnet isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of the beads if I wanted to wear it as a necklace, but it’s the best possible thing for trying to put on a bracelet one handed.

I made a similar wrap style bracelet out of these beads, but I deliberately strung all the beads together by color. It looks kind of weird all layed out….

But when you wrap it around your wrist all those beads line up and it looks like you’re wearing stacked bangles.

I’ve got lots more to come, and I’ve sorted them based on technique. So by the end of this series you’ll have enough jewelry making skills to make all kinds of stuff on your own.