Be Fri's and Friendship Rings

Be Fri? What does that mean to you? Growing up it was the half of the broken heart that I so desperately wanted. I mean, who wants “st ends”? Now the pitiful part of the story is not that I was stuck with “st ends” but that I didn’t have anyone to have a Best Friends broken heart necklace with. I think I mourned this point for many years until I somehow nabbed 6 Best Friends in college (I’d like to see that heart broken up in 7 pieces).

Now as a mother of a 7 year old little girl who so desperately wants to have a friend to share a charm with, I understand how hard it is for little girls to have a best friend. Each girl is in different activities (sports, music, church) or a different class in school and let’s not even mention the mood swings and extreme emotions!

So, I convinced my daughter that she doesn’t want to be tied down to just one friend. That many friends have lots of different things to offer. (Is this foreshadowing of the dating years?) I told her that we could make friendship rings instead. And do you know how cute she is? She first wanted a matching ring with me…and then I made her include her baby sister.

I tried to make this a project that she could do, but truth be told, I ended up doing most of it. It only took me about 5 minutes to do them…so no big deal, right?

You will need:
Colored craft wire (sometimes comes in sampler kits shown)
Wire snippers
Matching beads
Plastic Ring Mandrel (artbeads.com sells them for $3.77)
Needle nose pliers or crimp pliers

First take a ring you already have and size it on the mandrel.

If you are making small kids rings, you will need about 27 inches of wire. I happen to have ginormous hands and fingers and to make my size 10 ring, I used 48 inches of wire. 

Take your bead and string it on the wire and when the bead is in the middle, bend the wires on the sides of the bead so the bead won’t move around. 

Then place that on the mandrel one size bigger than you desire. For example, if you are making a size 5 ring, place it at the 6 mark. Begin to wrap the wire around the mandrel. Make sure one wire is wrapping above the bead and the other one is wrapping below the bead.

Sometimes I wrap the bead itself.

Make sure to leave about 2 inches to wrap the sides. When you only have about 2 inches of wire on both sides, pull the ring of the mandrel and wrap the ends of the wire around the sides. You can snip any excess off with your wire cutters and then crimp or squeeze the end of the wire so that it won’t snag your skin or your clothes. 

Then push the ring down the mandrel to the correct size. This tightens all the wires.

There you have it. You can do this with big or small beads. You can match the bead or the wire or both. Hopefully these friendship rings are a hit. Hey roomies, guess what you guys are getting at our next reunion?