Plastic lace lanyard DIY (aka: how to make boondoggles :)
I think theres about 90 names for this craft – plastic lace lanyard, boondoggles, the summer camp lanyard, jellyfish weaving and a zillion others! What do you call them? Because if you’re anything like me, you made a zillion of these very summer right along with my endless friendship bracelets 🙂
So I for sure had to resurrect this craft to not only teach my kids, but keep on the nostalgic crafting tradition right along with the woven potholders that I made a few weeks back 🙂
The materials for this are simple (and if you read on, you’ll see that I even experimented with some other types of string that I *may* just like better than the traditional plastic lacing) 🙂 So grab what you’ve got and get started 🙂
MATERIALS:
- Plastic lacing (or paracord or thick/tube-like yarn) 🙂
- Scissors
- Any keychain or hook end (or even earring loops like I used 🙂
INSTRUCTIONS:
Cut one string of each color and lay the center of each string over top of one another like a plus sign.
- Take the string that is on the bottom and loop them over top like suspenders – one end will be “going one direction” and the other end will be “going the other direction”
2. Then take one of the ends of “top” string and lace over one suspender and under the other. Repeat this with the other end of the top string.
3. Now slowly pull tight to make a square with the string. Ie, pull on each of the 4 ends equally as best as you can to make a “square” square 🙂
Repeat steps 1-3 until you’ve made your lanyard as long as you desire. To finish it off you will simply weave your ends through the square next to it and then into the middle. You also could finish it off with a super tight knot and some glue (especially if using yarn or paracord) 🙂
I had soooooo much fun with these (and my kids did too). I know there are ZILLIONS of patterns out there to make these with more strings and different outcomes so the SKY really is the limit! 🙂 so have funnnnn and happy crafting 🙂
