Homemade Gift: Hemp and Button Bracelets

I've had the same craft supplies for years: Box of collected spare buttons, bag of tiny spools of thread, bundles of hemp and leather cord, tubes of glue, yarn and fabric remnants, sheets of paper, bins of pens and markers... And not just the same kinds of supplies, but the same exact supplies. They've moved with me from South Carolina to Oregon, and now into their their third apartment.

About a month ago I decided it was time to use everything up. Living within walking distance of a Michaels was the main motivation - As I make things and exhaust my supplies, I'll reward myself with a little shopping trip to restock. And man, oh man, do I love spending hours and hours and hours in a craft store, looking at every single item and thinking about what I can make with it - Window crafting, in a way. Even the tiniest purchase warrants a full store walkthrough. A full store blissthrough...

Anyway, last weekend I taught myself, with the help of a tutorial on madebyhippies.com, how to make hemp bracelets. The knotting technique is fairly simple, and can be used with other relatively beefy materials like heavier gauge yarn and leather cording. Adding buttons was just a matter of threading them in between knots. I tied each of the bracelets onto my wrist in a different way, to test which is the most sturdy. So far, all three are holding up nicely.

When I was a kid, I made friendship bracelets out of embroidery thread. Back then, I only knew two or three patterns and bored of it easily. Now that we have the handy dandy internet, websites like friendship-bracelets.net allow for endless creative possibilities. The pattern repository is easy to search, and each bracelet has a difficulty rating so you know what you're up against. And believe me, making bracelets isn't child's play - some of them are quite elaborate!

Once I'm through all of my cord and yarn bits, I'll go nuts in Michaels picking out the colors for my summertime bracelet-making extravaganza. Want one?