How to End a Hemp Jewelry Project

If you've ever worked with hemp jewelry before, you know that you can easily ruin a piece at the very end of the project. Once you cut off the ends of the strings, redoing knots and reworking the entire piece is much harder without enough slack to hold onto the hemp properly. Here's how to effectively end a basic hemp jewelry project.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Make sure the piece is properly knotted, and ready to finish. Size it again one more time before you knot or cut the ends.

2. Gather all of the threads together, and cut all strands about half an inch down from where the shortest strand ends so that they are all the same length, but you still have plenty of room. Make sure to cut straight across instead of at an angle to avoid problems later

3. Coat the end of the hemp strands with beeswax by rubbing it into the hemp. To avoid mashing up the end while trying to coat the end of the hemp strands, hold the wax against the hemp about half an inch from the end and, while pressing the hemp to the wax, pull the wax out to the ends. Do this once on each side of the strand grouping.

4. String the end bead that you chose when you started the project. Make sure to string all remaining strands through the final bead. If for some reason all strands won't fit through the bead, change the bead to one of the same size with a larger hole. If you don't have another bead, or simply don't want to change beads, knot off one or more of the strings by tying two strings together with a simple knot and cutting off one of the remaining strands. If you chose to use this method, keep in mind that your finished piece of jewelry won't look as polished.

5. Tie off the hemp strands that you just strung through your final beads into a simple knot. Tighten your knot and once secure, cut off the ends so you are ending with a nice clean-looking piece of jewelry.