Measuring a Handmade Beaded Hemp Necklace

Series Summary

Are you creative and like to work with your hands? Are you interested in fashion, jewelry, or clothing? Do constantly find yourself promoting the benefits of hemp as one of Nature’s wonder fibers? Well, even if you don’t fit neatly into one of these categories, you may find these videos interesting.

In this free arts and crafts series, learn how to make a hemp beaded necklace. Yes, you’ve seen them around the necks of all of the coolest people in town. Now learn how to make your own with relatively little training or financial outlay. Our expert will show you how to measure the length of your necklace to match your body size, how to anchor the necklace as you’re making it, and two different knotting techniques to create two different designs for your necklace. So the next time you see someone with a hemp necklace, you can one up them by telling them you made yours by hand. That’s eco-friendly, cost-effective, and self-reliant—a trifecta of efficient living.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Amy Kline. I'm here on behalf of Expert Village to show you how to create hemp jewelry. Now, this involves hemp obviously and this comes in many different thicknesses. I like to work with the thinner version because it gives you more options on what kind of stuff you can put on it as far as beads and different findings of glass, anything that's got a predrilled hole that you could string onto the hem works fine. So we're going to start by cutting it. Now, it takes different lengths obviously to make a necklace vs. a bracelet. I use this little secret method of measuring with my arms because if you want a necklace you start with both your arms spanned and you fold in half and I find that if you cut it there that makes a perfect length for a necklace. So obviously, if you're a bigger person you have a bigger neck, you have wider arms it's going to come out bigger. So that's how we start and I'm going to show you how to start from the basic hemp all the way through the beads, tying on the beads to create a finished necklace. So that's what we're going to do. So now that we've cut this first piece, this is going to be our working strands. So now we need our drone strands which are the strands that run through the middle of the necklace that you don't actually see. It's the strand that we're actually tying the knot onto. So, that one can obviously be a little shorter because the length of it isn't getting taken up by knots. So you can actually measure your neck. You want to give yourself a little working room, so if you want it to fit like the one that I have on, give yourself a little extra room and obviously fold it in half like I showed you and of course I'm getting it all tangled up. So you fold it in half, wrap it around your neck, give yourself a little space and cut it. So now you've got your drone strands which aren't worked on, well aren't tied, they're worked around and then you have your working strands which are longer. So when you put them together with the middles together, fold it in half. You got your middle so you end up actually with 4 strands hanging down. You put them together like that and then you just tie an overhand knot which is basically you just cross it over, bring it through like you're starting to tie a shoe and you leave yourself a little loop at the top and that's going to help you close it when you get to the end of it, because you'll have a bead on the end of it when you get done working on it. It'll go through the loop and that's your closure."