Sunday, November 10, 2013



Rubber band loom jewelry is all the rage these days.  

 

 It is like the friendship bracelets and paper bead jewelry of our days.  Now you can take little rubber bands and make chains of stretchy rubber, AND KIDS DON’T REALIZE THEY ARE WEAVING/CROCHETING !!!! 

Sadly I wanted to know what all the fuss was about so I decided to give it a go.  I got a pack of 500 mini hair bands from Walmart.  I think it was 2.00 for the pack, they come in an assortment of rainbow colors.  They even have these at the dollar store (we all know how much I love the dollar store) I tried 2 different techniques. 

First technique: 

get two markers, take the first rubber band/hair tie and make a figure eight over the two markers that you are holding side by side.  Then put the next two rubber bands over the two markers/pencils/etc, without making a figure eight. 

From here take the bottom rubber band and stretch it over the two rubber bands, taking it off the first marker/pencil.  Do the same with the other side, then add your next rubber band without making an 8 and continue to take off the bottom rubber bands, stretching them around the two that are on the pencils/markers/etc.  Continue this till you have a chain.   

Second technique:

                Use a knitting loom.  They look like this

Except I don’t have a ton of money to spend on fancy plastic.  So you can make one.  I took a marker, 5 pencils, 5 small paintbrushes.  Place the marker in the center, around the marker the five paintbrushes; secure them with 3 small rubber bands, in-between each paintbrush put a pencil as a divider.



Use the protruding paint brushes as the pegs for the loom.  You want to take your first rubber band and do the figure 8 on every peg.  Basically put it on the first paint brush, twist it, drag it to the second, twist it, drag to the 3rd, twist drag to the 4th, twist and drag to the 5th, twist and put back on the first.  

Then put a rubber band around all of the pegs
Do the same as you would in technique 1, take the bottom rubber band off, stretching it around the top rubber band.  When you get to the peg with 3 , take the bottom 2 off together.   
Continue adding rubber bands and “weaving” or “crocheting” them off until you have a nice strand.  I chose to do mine rainbow colored, red, orange, yellow, green, blue violet, and hot pink, in a repeating pattern. 
When you get to the end of your chain (lol) move all of the rubber bands on the pegs to one peg, do not drop any of the rubber bands. Here you can either take a jump ring and collect all of the rubber bands on the peg or take a rubber band and weave it under them all. 



I think it worked well for me, I just got bored and didn't finish it off.  you can see my three attempts there.  I like the one where I used the "loom" the best, I wish I had used 3 rubber bands at a time rather than just two.  It would have made it thicker and better quality. 
Anyway, enjoy making these. 

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