THE ACT OF ADORNING: Friends Forever

Back in primary school, I remember sitting down with my friends at lunch, and then my brothers at home, and using up all Mum's cross-stitch cotton to make friendship bracelets. Well it appears that the old friendship bracelet has had a massive comeback of late! Designers are all giving it a go and charging exorbinant prices for their gorgeous bands, that ultimately we all could make ourselves. As much as I love what some designers have done, the champions of this movement would have to be best buddies and designers Stacy Herzog and Sarah Reid of Frieda and Nellie.

They have used beautifully intricate and difficult designs and intertwined them with vintage jewels, I just love how they have even used the humble friendship bracelet to make some very OTT necklaces. One of these babies is definitely on my lust have list.

Frieda and Nellie beauties can be purchased online at www.charmandchain.com and www.friedaandnellie.com

Above images thanks to www.charmandchain.com and www.friedaandnellie.com

I thought I'd give the friendship bracelet a go myself, I find that even just as a base or to use as a strand within a necklace or a backing for embroidery they are very useful, especially because you can integrate a plethora of colours into your designs. Downfall... RSI in the hands! Definitely beautiful but extremely tedious and time consuming. If you have the time though, sit down, pull out some old threads and make yourself something cute to wear, its easy, we all knew how to do it, and now you can find heaps of amazing designs on the web. I used friendship-bracelets.net. Here's one of my unfinished products...

Made by Elle Effe

But I understand if you don't have the time, skills or knuckle strength to make your own. In that case I have done the hard work for you and found some really cool, affordable but still unique bands to wrap your wrists with.