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In all the thinking about dress up clothes and fun stuff for the Bit to play with that I’ve been doing lately, I’ve had on my list to make her some kind of bracelet involving jingle bells. I have quite the stash of little bells because I wanted a couple to decorate a knit ornament I made a few years back and had to buy a whole big package.
I envisioned making some kind of really cool bracelet that would look store bought and interesting. But then I remembered she’s 2, and prone to either ignore the things I make for her or try to destroy them. So I finally decided to go the simple route.
What You’ll Need
- round cord elastic
- jingle bells
- scissors
- tape measure
What You’ll Do
- Measure out a length of elastic that’s a few inches longer than your child’s wrist circumference. (I didn’t have the Bit handy, but I happen to know, because I’m making her mittens, that her wrist is 5.5 inches. I started with 14 inches of cord, but had a little left over to trim out. 12 inches might have done it.)
- String on a jingle bell. Tie a knot to keep it in place.
- Repeat as many times as you need to give the bracelet a decent number of bells. I didn’t want to crowd mine (though I may yet make one with more bells), but you could certainly load it up, though you’d need a longer cord for all those knots.
- Triple tie the ends together and trim any excess.
- Let the ringing begin!
The Bit liked to play with it more than she liked to wear it, but that’s fine.
It turns out she was having a crafty day yesterday, too. When I got to her daycare all the kids were sitting around the table with pipe cleaners and plastic beads! I got really excited. “You’re making pipe cleaner ornaments!” I said. Mrs. Farmer explained that the bead stash was from when she was a girl, and that she loved doing it with the kids at her daughter’s daycare, so she thought she’d give it a try.
The Bit did amazingly well with such a big test of her fine motor skills.
I did help her a little bit, because she ordered me to, but she actually strung most of the beads herself. (I made it into a circle.) Too cute! Somewhere I think I have some of these that I made over the years…
