Girls Camp Crafts - FishTail Bracelets

I was trying to think of one more bracelet we could do and started fiddling around with embroidery floss and braids.  Regular 3 strand braided bracelets were cool, but not different.  And I knew a lot of girls would like to learn how to fishtail braid, so there it was.

These took a LONG time though.  After about an hour of watching the girls I realized it would go a lot faster if you used 2-3 strands at a time.  So I began making them with 12-14 strands instead of 6-8, and I used 3 strands of the same color to cross over instead of 1 shown in the tutorial.  The result was a very cool, chunky, and much quicker version.  BUT because there were so many strands the knots were very chunky and hard to wear as a bracelet.  So we made much faster thick and chunky FishTail Key chains, too.  I didn't get any pictures though, sorry.  Too busy craftin'.

Figuring how to organize the thread was tricky.  I ended up cutting all the 1 yard strands myself and wrapping them around a clothespin so the girls could just unravel one strand at a time.  This worked pretty well, but I realized quickly that there is no real organized way to do anything with 100 girls and embroidery floss.  So it just ended up as a free for all with the floss all over the place.  Which is okay if they're okay.  I guess.

It was hard for me to walk away on that one.

Here's the tutorial:

PDF FILE - GIRLS CAMP

FISHTAIL BRACELET TUTORIAL

Click HERE for another tutorial on Fishtail Bracelets I found, from Oh So Pretty.

Girls Camp - Hemp Macrame Bracelets Tutorial

My mom taught me to do macrame back in the 80's.  I love that most of these crafts we did are a throwback to my adolescent years, and the girls didn't even know it.  Everything that was once cool, then not, is cool again.  Awesome.

• I bought the hemp from Hemp Beadery on Etsy.   I got 12 spools for $55, which was more than enough for 100 girls to make plenty of bracelets.  

• The beads came from Joanns.  Both for the bracelets, and for the boards.

• I also bought some beeswax for the girls to rub onto the end of the hemp.  This made it a lot easier to slide the beads on.

For each bracelet you need two pieces of hemp.  One 24" piece and one 72" piece (3x the length of the short piece).  So essentially you use 8 ft of hemp per bracelet.  This will help in determining how much hemp to buy.  I cut these pieces before camp to eliminate that headache with 100 girls, so the tutorial below just refers to the "short string" and "long string".

PDF File

Macrame Bracelet 

Tutorial Collage 

You can use that PDF File to print out the tutorial for easy reference.

Oh Happy Macrame.

Girls Camp Crafts 2012

I was in charge of crafts this summer at Girls Camp.   I scoured the web for easy-ish crafts the girls could do that didn't require electricity (like glue guns or sewing machines) that would be useful and "cool" and would teach them something they could do at home.  Holy moly, this is harder than you think.  I became so grateful for all those other Craft Ladies who have posted their projects each year, so I'm giving back.  Thank you ladies.

Here's what I finally narrowed it down to:

• Friendship Pins
• Hemp Macrame Bracelets
• Fishtail Bracelets
• Tee-Shirt Yarn Finger Weave Bracelets
• Pom Poms

I put together a tutorial for each and printed out the pictures to mount on poster board so the girls could use those as a reference.  Then I made an 8x10 collage of the tutorials and laminated them so they'd also have instructions at their tables.  I have to admit, they didn't use the tutorials, much.  Once in a while I'd see some girls huddled around a card, but they'd eventually end up wanting to be shown. So we'd get a small group together and show them how, then once they got it they would help other girls learn.  It was great watching them teach each other.

We had the crafts available during free time - about 2 hours each afternoon. They could choose to swim, nap, canoe, hike, or craft.  We had a pretty steady flow of girls in and out each day.  I would introduce a new craft each morning but we kept the supplies out for the craft from the day before so they could choose what they wanted to work on.  They could make as many as they wanted, and they totally did.

I made these boards before camp to make it easier for the girls to work on their bracelets.  They were fantastic.  They made it so much easier, especially on the hemp bracelets.  I highly recommend making a couple of these if you ever do bracelets.


I will post the tutorials I used for each of these crafts, plus supply lists and links to where I bought most of the stuff {Our budget was $600, and I spent every penny}.  I'll link each tutorial back to this page for quick reference.

Here's a link to my Girls Camp Crafts Pinterest board for more ideas.

I love camp.  I wanna do the crafts forever.  please.