When gathering up supplies for this, keep in mind the thickness of your floss (or whatever you want to use as the "string") in relation to the size of the holes in the beads- you'll need to be able get two strands threaded through the bead. I used regular embroidery (dmc) floss and the large-sized seed beads.
My wrist is about 6 and a quarter inches around, so I cut the middle floss piece to be about 19 inches long and then doubled it over (through the clasp). [This was longer than I needed it to be, but it was nice to have a little extra length at the bottom to temporarily hold the beads until I slid them up into the bracelet.] The middle strands can be any color as you will only see a little bit of it near the clasps.
I cut the longer floss for the side pieces (used to tie knots) at 24 inches- and doubled it over as well. [It was several inches longer than it needed to be, but you do want the longer piece to be at least a few inches longer than the short piece.] The color of this piece does matter- it's the color you will see between and along side the beads.
Once you have your 2 pieces of floss, slid both through one of the rings on your clasp. Adjust each piece of floss so that the clasp is in the center and then tape it onto a table, clipboard, or other hard surface. [I used my daughter's plastic Crayola clipboard/travel case.] You don't want to use a tape that's too sticky or it'll pull at the strands in the floss- I used painter's tape.
To save you from taping and untaping the bottom strands for each bead- add about 15-20 beads to the middle (shorter) strands and leave them near the bottom. Once you've done that, then tape the ends of strands down- I found it easier to make the knots when the piece is pulled tight.
Tie half of a square knot* around the middle strands with the longer side pieces, then slide one of the beads up from the bottom.
[* Take the long, right piece, leave a little bit of a loop and weave the end under the shorter pieces and lay it on top of the left, long piece. Take that piece and weave the end through the loop made by the right piece.]
If you've made it this far, the rest is easy. Just repeat the knot and sliding a bead up to the top until all the beads have been used. Then add more beads to the bottom and keep going. The bracelet is going to start twisting the longer it gets- tape it down if necessary.
When the bracelet is long enough, attach the other end of the clasp. I knotted the ends of the floss to the clasp in a rather unfancy manner, but it looks alright anyway. The finished length of the bracelet (including clasp) that I made was 7 and a quarter inches. There was plenty of floss left, but that was enough for my wrist and I just trimmed off the excess length.
My son has had a great time yanking on it, but it's held up well so far. And even if it does break, the beads won't go flying- which is one reason I love these types of bracelets.
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