craftgrrl | Dreamcatcher tutorial (Reply)

Totally easy and you can personalize to your heart’s content. Make it huge, make it tiny, make it shiny and girly or ruddy and natural.

Materials:

1. RING

If you’re lucky enough to have a dream-catcher-sized metal ring lying around, you’re golden. If not, you get to be creative and figure out what you can use to make a ring the size you want your dreamcatcher. I think some twigs tied together would have a nice, natural look. For this tutorial, I cut a ring from some cardboard, which would actually be ok to use if you cut it thin because you can wrap it with suede string or hemp later. It wouldn’t be perfectly cylindrical but it could work out well enough. A friendly fellow craftgrrl also mentioned that large craft stores carry these sorts of rings.

2. STRING

You’ll also need some type of string. I’m using hemp string here, but you can use whatever you want to get the look you desire. Off the top of my head, some options are embroidery floss, suede string, yarn, or sewing thread. Try ribbon or narrow lace for a more unconventional result. You’ll want the thickness of your string to be proportionate to the size of your ring; if your ring is small, a very thick string will be too bulky to make much of a web.

3. PRETTY THINGS

This is where it’s all you. Beads, feathers, furs, sequins, pearls, whatever you want to have woven into the web, hanging from the center hole, or hanging off the edges of the ring.

Hopefully lots of pictures will make up for any holes in my descriptions.

LET'S DO IT TO IT:

Materials:

Double knot string to ring:

Bring string from one point of ring to the next:

Space them evenly so the hole is in the middle at the end:

After making the first round, continue in the same way but this time, attach the string to the lengths of string you just placed:

Pull the string tight each time you loop around the other string:

These next three are a step-by-step to make the attachments. They're not knots, just bring the free string underneath the center of the string already placed, up, underneath itself, and out.

If you want to attach beads, just slide 'em on there. You don't have to knot before and after the bead unless it's a rather long portion of string and you want to make sure the bead(s) stay in a specific place.

Continue in like manner until the hole is the size you want, then tie a knot:

If you want to wrap the ring, just tie a knot and then wrap around the ring and the loose end of your string. A little glue may help here.

I didn't have enough string to wrap all the way around, but you get the idea, right? I also added a little beaded tassel by sliding on the bead, folding a piece of yarn in half and tying it to the free end from the web, then sliding the bead down over the knot. You can use feathers or whatever you want; glue might help here, as well. I've also seen things tied across the bottom edge of the ring to hang down.