Wampum Belt


Hello everyone...We made this page in the hopes that you'll make/design your Wampum Belt with such ease that you'll continue to make them for your friends and family!

Any additional comments or suggestions, please email us at: Age18Forevr@aol.com

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Materials Needed: String, Beads, Patience, Your Story, A Pattern to go with your story, Smiles and Giggles, 4-6 Nails, One flat wooded board, 2 blocks of wood (to raise off other board), Saw. First you'll hammer the two blocks to the flat wood, then you'll saw approximately 18 slots (or any number equally on each side) on each side of the block wood. Then you'll tie double knot in string, slink across the slots and tie a smaller knot on opposite side. Now you're finished with the prep work and just need your story and patterns.

OK, have fun and remember this will not be finished in one day...



Stretch your string or yarn across the board. Knot both sides, but the side that the beads end up on will be double knotted--because that side remains stationary. The other side will have a small knot, just big enough to hold the string from slipping, however, small enough that the bead can slide over the knot.

Photo below is an example.





This is the side that remains stationary and that you'll slide the beads over to create your pattern and story. The photo below shows an example of the first part of Sirena's story. The pattern in greenish/blue means "Leading To Happiness". (See pattern close-up photo below)





In addition to the sites that were sent home, which were good examples of the overall project, this is a helpful site we found, Pattern Creator. Sirena either drew a picture in an art program (can use Paintbrush in Windows if you don't have any art programs...) or found a picture and saved it as a photo in our computer. Then in "image location" found that photo and then created a pattern. It's still alot of work figuring number of beads, color and lining up, but it certainly helped! Good Luck with your project and like we said earlier...feel free to email :)

Finished!!!

The symbols are as follows:

This means "Me or I!"

This means "Riding a Horse!"

This means "Leads to Victory!"

Here is a close-up photo of the finished belt.

You can see some details from the close-up photo...a tip for weaving it all together is to have an adult wax the end of the string you might be using...

Sirena's story is:

"Happiness leads to me horseback riding that leads to victory that leads to happiness!"

Thanks for checking out Sirena's Wampum Belt...