DIY | Galentine’s Day Friendship Bracelets

Since Friday is Galentine’s Day and I believe that any excuse to celebrate female friendship is a fabulous one, I decided it was time to climb back into my mountainous mess of DIY supplies and make something amazing (and 90s inspired!) for my BFFs (girls, please feign surprise when I hand these to you later 😉 ). Since I have a seemingly endless hoard of jewelry supplies, it only made sense to go straight for the friendship bracelet.

I’m personally of the “any bracelet given in the spirit of friendship is a friendship bracelet” school of thought, so I was not about to tie myself down to braided summer camp wrist candy. Instead, I decided to step it up a notch and make really simple beaded bracelets.

Here’s what you need for each bracelet:

• seed beads
• 1 clasp
• 2 jump rings
• 2 crimp beads
• pliers
• beading thread or wire

This is one of those projects where the execution is way simpler than trying to explain it, so I’m hoping my little picture collage below will help.

The average bracelet size is 7.5 inches, so you should start by cutting about a nine inch strip of beading thread. Then, as shown in the top left picture, thread it through the crimp bead, around one of the jump rings and then back through the crimp bead so that your thread is looped around the ring and through the crimp bead.

Next, take your crimping pliers (note: I was using flat nose pliers in the picture shown here) and crush the crimp bead as close to the jump ring as possible. This will secure the thread to the jump ring. It should look like the photo in the bottom left corner.

Now you’re ready to start threading your beads. Be sure to do the first few over both the main piece of thread and the little tail that was left over from the first steps. This serves as added security (see the bottom right picture in the collage above). If you cut the thread too close to the crimp bead it could slip through and come undone. A little tail makes that more difficult.

Keep threading those beads until your bracelet is the desired length minus the length of your clasp. My clasp was a 1/2 inch long, so I kept beading my bracelet until it was 7 inches long. Then I repeated the first few steps, substituting the clasp for the jump ring.

Here’s the final result:

Simple and cute, right?

And since packaging is a major piece of gift giving in my universe (I mean, are you going to be more excited about a gift in a plastic CVS bag or one with a little more fanfare?), I had to figure out a way to fancy these babies up—and add a giggle or two.

My friends and I are totally 90s babes and we were all obsessed with Saved by the Bell. It seemed both hilarious and perfect to add lyrics from the Zack Attack song “Friends Forever” to a little piece of card stock to display the bracelets on. It was also incredibly easy. I googled the Zack Attack logo and the first chorus and laid them out in Photoshop to print four to a page. You could do something similar using Picmonkey or shoot me an email at jen@cuddlesandchaos.com and I’ll send you my file.

Once you cut down the cards, you just need to cut little snips in the sides and you can attach your bracelets. Incredibly simple, inexpensive, and still totally thoughtful. My kind of project!

 This post is part of my DIY Supply Purge Project. I realized that I was slowly being buried alive in DIY supplies that made me squeal but were never put to use. To fix that problem, I’ve made it my mission to use up all of my supplies before I buy any new ones—and to share some fun DIYs with you guys along the way.

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