Making Friendship bracelet Graph Paper

This is my how to create a usable graph paper for designing friendship bracelets. It’s really simple and once you have this, you should be able to make so much more. Why copy someone else’s “pattern” when you can create originals, right?

I’ll be using Gimp for the software here because it’s powerful and it’s free. Not everyone can afford Photoshop or its equivalent, so I’ll teach with this. Don’t worry, it’s available for Linux, Windows and Mac.

First thing is you will need these two images:

If you’re beginning with a flat start, you’ll need this image for the top row:

Download them, open them in Gimp and follow the video.

Ok now I’ll try to break it down for anyone who needs to translate this to a different language.

Sizing the graph is the number of strings before you loop or fold it, multiplied by 100. As my example was 12 strings, I made the graph 1200px wide. 5600px tall is just a nice number I use. If your design is something really long and you’re needing to draw it all the way out, you might have to increase that number.

12 strings once folded is 24 strands in play. This is a more advanced bracelet, but the same rules apply when making the graph for a smaller bracelet. 5 strings before the loop is 500px wide and will make it 10 strands wide.

Once you’ve created your graph paper of the size you are intending to use, I’d recommend saving it as a template. This way you don’t have to recreate it every time you want to design a piece of that size.

I have posted tutorials like Learning From A Photo where I’ve used this graph paper to work out a pattern. I will also be making additional videos so be sure to check back in.