Does anyone remember when small, colorful rubber bands were used in crazy, high-centered intricately woven ponytails instead of hooked and looped on looms to make key chain/bracelet creations?
I want my crazy hair back. I’m tired of our rubber band looms.
Well, let’s be honest here, I’m not necessarily tired of the looms, I’m tired of the rubber bands. They are everywhere! And I’m not talking about them being everywhere you go – the grocery store, the craft store, the gas station. I’m talking about them being everywhere in my home.
I don’t know where they are all coming from. I have bought my boys a few packs here and there but I think they have lost half of the bands in my couch cushions or in my vacuum cleaner. It’s a wonder they still have any left to make anything.
I used to cherish small, colorful rubber bands. I would hoard the tiny braces bands and use them to braid my hair for girls’ camp. I remember parting and separating my hair to make rubber-band anchored headbands around the top of my head.
Those were the days.
Now the bands are a dime a dozen. They sell for dirt cheap and come in every color and scent imaginable.
Whose big idea was it to take those bands and use them to fuel a giant rubber band weaving world? It was brilliant. I wish I would have thought of it.
My boys both have looms now. They even have an extra loom that they borrowed from their grandma. She also let them borrow a new kit of 2,000 glow-in-the-dark bands. Little does she know she probably won’t get nearly half of those back.
They’ll end up ground into our carpet or huddled in the corner of our cars.
I like the looms. I like when my boys sit quietly making their own bracelets. I like when they carefully lie out bands beforehand and get things organized and ready to make something.
The problem is they NEVER do it that way.
Normally I’ll walk into the living room to find a mountain of bands spread all over my carpet several yards away from their looms. They scoot back and forth from their bands pile to their loom, brushing them with their small fingers deep into my carpet.
Also, they rarely make things on their own. They need my help a lot of the time. And to tell you the truth I stink at using the loom. Half of the time my bracelets end up looking like this:
They are hard. I think I get in a hurry so I try to place the bands too quickly then I loop them in the wrong order and when we pull it off half of the bands fly back and hit us in the face.
Luckily we found a bunch of YouTube video tutorials on how to make things. That has been the only way we have had success.
We even pulled off making a Spider-Man. That was a serious victory.
But I don’t always have time to sit and watch a 40-minute video on how to make a waterfall-style bracelet and help my boys step-by-step – because if you have ever tried making one of those bracelets, you will know that you need to follow each step precisely. You mess up one time and the whole things turns into a rubber-band rats nest.
I’ve started picking up bands and tossing them. I know I shouldn’t. I know we will probably need them one day, (like the time we watched and followed an Olaf tutorial for more than an hour only to find out that we were a few white bands shy of being able to make the cute, animated snowman) but I’m sick of them peppered throughout my entire house.
The other night before dinner my youngest son put a couple of bands on his thumb, wearing them like a ring. That was fine and cute until he shoved his hands in his mouth in order to eat all of his macaroni and cheese and one of the bands ended up in his mouth. I had to scoop the food/rubber band wad out before he choked.
Help! How can I make this work? How can I make this fun? My boys love it. I need to calm down and realize that a few bands strung all over my house is not the end of the world. But it’s getting to me.
I’m about ready to melt them all down and make myself a giant, colorful paperweight. Maybe I’ll just steal them away and use them in my hair.
Boogers on the Wall 