By: Jessica DiRamio
My 7-year-old daughter attended our town’s Park Program for two weeks in July. She had such a blast playing games, swimming, and doing arts and crafts. Every day of camp, she came home with gimp to make friendship bracelets. Night after night we spent on the computer searching for tutorials. My daughter was in heaven making these for her friends, camp counselors, and her sisters. Here are a few of our favorite (and easy) bracelet knots:
The Cobra Stitch: Super easy to do with just 2 strands of gimp. This was my daughter’s favorite stitch.
The Butterfly Stitch: A little more complicated, but turns out beautiful. We made a zipper pull for her backpack in this stitch. The butterfly stitch can even be made into a ring. Although this is a little more advanced, we’re planning on trying this soon.
The Zipper Stitch: At my last count, we had about 20 zipper stitch bracelets. This one is super easy and uses 3 strands with two of them hanging straight, while the third is woven in and out of them. Looks like a real zipper at the end, especially if you use metallic gimp!
There are a bunch of other stitches, too! We searched the internet and found two great sites that had tutorials and even videos for gimp bracelet making. BoondoggleMan and Laneyards will be my go-to sites for years to come! AC Moore and Walmart are my favorite places to find affordable gimp. A lot of kits contain instructions for stitches as well.
The art of friendship bracelets is lost on many kids who never attend camp. It is my hope for my daughters that they love this fun craft as much as I do and pass it along to their kids someday. I love how relaxed my daughter is when making a bracelet. She even asked to go into a quiet room to concentrate on her work! My youngest daughter, who is 4, is a little too young to make the bracelets herself, but enjoys getting these cute gifts from her sister just as much.
It’s a great family craft.
Community Voices for Health 
I seriously had no idea there were so many stitches! I remember unearthing some boondoggle key chains my dad had made when he was a kid and I had them for a very long time. I think they disappeared with most of my childhood stuff when my family moved when I was in college! My son has done them before at camp too and I agree it’s a great activity. I’m saving your notes for future reference!
Thanks for sharing this. It brings back memories of my scouting days as well as my camp counselor days.
It is such a great activity for fine motor control, fun, concentration and passing time.
HaHa. Thanks for this! I used to make these as a kid. So fun.
I learned this in 5th grade at camp storer I loved! Im a senior at high school and I still enjoy making them in my free time I love GIMP!!! 🙂
Looks really cool I will have to try it😃