How to Soften Hemp Necklaces

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Jessica and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to be teaching you how to make a hemp necklace. Now that your necklace is done, you're going to find that once you finish your hemp, it's really rough and stiff. When you put it on, it can be really itchy for the first couple of days. You can just wear it for a couple of days. I will suggest wearing it in the shower and it'll kind of soften up. You can see how stiff this is. One way to avoid that is to soak it in a bowl of water for a couple of hours. Then you're going to be left with something like this. You can see how kind of loose this is? It's also quite soft and it's not going to be as itchy as a necklace that hasn't been soaked. You don't have to do it, but it makes it a lot easier to wear. If you're giving it as a gift, it's usually nice to give them something that's not going to be all scratchy around their neck. I would definitely recommend that. After you finish your necklace, just soak it in a bowl of water for just a couple of hours and it'll soften up for you. You can just kind of play with for a little while and it'll also just kind of loosen it up, get rid of some of the pokey strings that are going to scratch your neck. If you have a big necklace like this one, you're probably going to want to soak it for a little bit longer because this thick hemp tends to be a little bit rougher and a little bit scratchier than if you're using something really fine, which wouldn't take much to kind of work out. As you can see, this one is very loose. It's very soft. This one is also quite well worn, so that helps as well. You're going to soak it for a little bit longer if it's a really thick big necklace."