Sunday, August 31, 2008

Mother's going GREEN Day 94 - Children's Eco-Craft

Since I have been talking about hemp I figured we could make some hemp jewelry and such. I have chosen to make a bracelet and/or key chain.

Hemp Bracelet and/or Key chain
You will need:

--Stands of Hemp
-- Beads

-- Key ring (if you chose the key chain)

Directions (with an adults help if required):

We will be using the easiest knot in our creation the "Square Knot".

-- You will require 4 stands in total (so get 1 stand of 24" for 'filler' and fold it in half and for your working stands one strand 6' long and fold it in half).

-- With the loops of the folded stands together tie them together with a knot creating a loop. (in ours we used a bead for a fastener so we measured to make sure the bead would fit through the loop snugly when we tied the loop. (if you choose to make a key chain attach the loop to the key ring at this point).

-- The 2 shorter strands are your filler stands and they are to remain in the centre of your work with the 2 working strands on each side.

-- Follow the instructions on this site to tie the "Square Knot". Please note that they are using four strands for their filler instead of the 2 strands that we are using.

-- To add the beads - insert both filler strands through the hole of the bead and tie the knot around them. We chose to make our bracelet with a message - also by doing this we had way less knots to tie.

-- keep tying the knots until the length of knotted hemp is the desired length for your bracelet and then tie them off. In our case we inserted a bead on all 4 strands and tied it off. (this is where it ends for the key chain)

-- the end bead is then inserted into the the loop to create a 'clasp' to close the bracelet.

This craft is probably for the older children although my children had fun selecting the beads and it was great for letter recognition as my son searched for the letters as I asked for them.

If you are struggling to follow my directions there are many directions available on the Internet.

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