DIY band looms

So far, we have been lucky to avoid the rainbow loom craze. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. A birthday party at the start of the holidays got Bear hooked on it, and by association, Boy2. We did a tour of the shops directly after the party, and again the next day, but there was not a loom to be had. Bands, yes, but no looms. I has seen on Pinterest a drawing-pins-in-cork DIY, and so I grabbed a pack of drawing pins instead, with the idea that the spare shoebox sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be “dealth with” may just be a good base for a loom.

And it actually worked ok… until they tried to make something a bit trickier than a basic bracelet, and then it became clear the pins needed to get some decent traction in the substrate, moreso than what a shoebox could offer. Back on went the thinking cap, and it didn’t take long until the plywood left over from my thread minder experiment came to mind. With the baby happily napping, the children and I grabbed the monitor and set ourselves up for some quality crafting time. Easter egg decorating for them, plywood and saw and hammer for me. I went super-casual on this project – I used a square to draw two lines the full length of the square ruler to mark out two lengths of ply roughly the same width, about what looked right. then I ruled off the bottom edge with the square making the two lengths about the same as the shorter edge of the shoebox. A bit of elbow grease on the handsaw and I had the bases ready to go. Then I simply hammered the drawing pins in place, again, just eyeballing it, to create two different looms – one with three rows all aligned:

And one with the middle row off-set. For the offset loom, I added both rows of blue pins first, and then the yellow, to try and keep it square-ish.

I did learn within the first row or so to not hammer too far – the plywood, at 7mm was thinner than the pinning section of the drawing pins, and if I hammered them in too far, the points would come through the other side. It didn’t take long for me to work out how much I needed to hit them though. I think all up, it took around 20 minutes to make both of these (plus a mini two-pin loom for Butterfly, who of course couldn’t be left out), and the boys are chuffed with the outcome. They are happy to have something to use without having to wait for the shops to get new looms in, I’m happy to not have to outlay cold hard cash for something they are likely to be bored of within the week. Or maybe not, judging by the way they happy passed a couple of hours looming away, and getting me to pull up video tutorials on the iPad to try. Now, to get the bands under control…any hot tips for easy band storage?