How to Make a Double Strand Stretch Bracelet

There’s nothing more frustrating than your stretch bracelet breaking and all the beads falling all over the pavement! In today’s tutorial, I’m going to show you how I knot my stretch bracelets to make them more secure.

Stretch bracelets are so easy to make and really wonderful to wear.

This bracelet is double stranded – basically it’s long enough for you to wrap it around your wrist twice. You could use this same technique to make any stretch bracelet, simply making it shorter fora single strand bracelet.

Materials

You really don’t need much to make this stretch bracelet. Here’s what I used:

8mm Natural Rose Quartz Beads x 41-45 (depending on your wrist size)
5x6mm Tibetan Silver Heart Beads x4‍
8x5mm Tibetan Style Star Bead Caps x6‍
11mm Tibetan Silver Barrel Bead x1‍
6mm Jump Ring x1‍
6mm Silver Filigree Wrapped Charm x1‍
0.6mm Elastic x1 metre

Tools

Instructions

Watch the video or read the instructions below.

Prepare the Elastic

Fold the metre length of elastic in half, matching the ends. Tie a knot in the folded end leaving a loop. Tighten the knot but not too tight – you want it to stop the beads falling off. If it doesn’t you can pop the loop over your little finger while you string the beads to stop them coming off.

Stretch the elastic from one end to the other in sections. Pre-stretching the elastic should ensure that it doesn’t stretch when you wear the bracelet.

Thread On The Beads

Thread the open ends onto the needle. Thread on the beads in the following order:

1 Rose Quartz Bead
2 Bead Caps (1 facing the bead and 1 facing away)
1 Rose Quartz Bead
1 Tibetan Silver Heart (point facing away from current beads)
18-22 Rose Quartz Beads (depending on the size of your wrist)

Next add the following beads:

1 Tibetan Silver Heart (point facing current beads)
1 Rose Quartz Bead
2 Bead Caps (both facing the bead)

The next run of beads is as follows:

1 Tibetan Silver Heart (point facing away from current beads)
8-22 Rose Quartz Beads (to match the other side)

The final beads are:

1 Tibetan Silver Heart (point facing current beads)
1 Rose Quartz Bead
2 Bead Caps (1 facing the bead and 1 facing away)
1 Rose Quartz Bead
1 Barrel Bead

Tie the Knot

Remove the needle. Tighten the knot in the loop end so that the beads will slip over it. Separate the two pieces of the elastic.

Thread one of the ends of elastic through the loop.

Holding both ends of the elastic, push all the beads up to the loop end, over the knot and the loop until there are no gaps.

Separate the ends again and tie a knot in the elastic. Thread the ends through the centre of the bracelet and tie another knot, making sure that the knot sits on top of the previous one. Pull nice and tight but not so tight that the elastic breaks.

Repeat this several times until you are happy that it’s secure. Tie one more knot on top of the last to secure. Your knots will lie side by side almost. Make sure they are nice and tight.

Trim the ends to about 3mm from the last knot and tuck inside the barrel bead. If you didn’t have a barrel bead, you could just push the knots inside the closest bead. If you are feeling a little worried about the knot coming undone, you can add a little bit of glue or clear nail polish to this knot and push it inside the bead, however, I’ve never worried about this and they have not come undone.

Add the Charm

The last thing to do to complete this bracelet is to add the charm. Using your chain nose pliers, open the jump ring. If you need help with that, watch this video, all about jump rings.

Thread on the charm and then the loop of the barrel bead. Close up the jump ring.

How to Wear

To wear this bracelet, all you do is put it over your wrist twice. There will be a place at the back where the bracelet crosses over.

I hope that you enjoyed making this bracelet with me today, and that you use this knotting technique on other stretch bracelets. I just love the beautiful rose quartz beads I’ve used here.