Loom Bracelet for Burning Man Gifting

I've been seeing tons of rainbow loom tutorials on Instructables recently, but never really felt the need to try it myself until I saw this loom bracelet tutorial by Mark Montano. He's a relatively new author here, but I love his style and how he's able to transform ordinary objects into fun and colorful projects. I love his version of the loom bracelet because it incorporates other elements like chains and charms, which really stood out to me from other loom bracelet projects I've seen.

I went to Burning Man this year for the 4th time and I decided to make similar bracelets to give out and participate in the "gift economy" while I was there.

In the original instructable, Mark used chain links to connect the two sides of the bracelet. Since I wanted to make these for Burning Man, instead of using chain, I laser cut some acrylic with the Burning Man symbol and the year. I picked a bright, highlighter yellow-green color since it stood out so well.

I also found some really cool UV reactive rubber bands and I knew they were perfect. It's very bright out in the Black Rock Desert, so the bands really stood out!

I actually ran out of time to make these before I left, so I grabbed my laser cut pieces, rubber bands, s-clips, and loom and headed out to the desert.

With the loom facing away from you, start at the edge and loop two bands between peg 1 & 2. Next, two bands between 2 & 3. Continue to the the second to last peg. Loop two bands through one of the holes in your charm and loop all of them over the last peg that had the bands looped around it. In the original instructable, you do both sides at once, but since I used a rigid acrylic charm I had to only attach one side at a time.

To complete one side of the bracelet, flip your loom around and with your hook, grab the 2 bands on the last peg and stretch them around the end link and on to the next peg.

Now with your hook, reach through the peg, grab the 2 bands on that peg and loop them on the peg next to it, this will start creating a chain. Finish one side of the chain and slip an s-hook onto the last loops and starting on the side with the acrylic charm, pull it off the pegs.

Repeat the last step on the other side to create the other side of the bracelet. Attach the s-hook from the first side to the last loops on the other side. You might have to pull the bracelet off to get the end to reach, but make sure the last loops don't fall off!

You're done!

I made a ton of these and gave them to lots of awesome people I met on the playa. Once I got the hang of them they were really fast to make. If you have access to a laser cutter they are really easy to personalize, or you can get them cut from a service like Ponoko.

Have fun!