Paracord Necklaces

A while ago I saw a necklace online that seemed to be made out of paracord. I tried replicating it in this instructables, hope you enjoy!

Before starting I recommend practicing the knot a few times with only one strand. This will help you get familiar with it and should make the whole process easier.

This video should help you get started, plus it features two strands being used at the same time, which is close to what we will be doing. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbVpcNxMFtI

The most intuitive thing to do would be to tie the 5 strands together and make the knot from there. I do not recommend this since it's easy to get mixed up. On the other hand, making the knot with one strand and adding the four others afterwards is not ideal either. The common ground I found was to start with three strands and add the other two afterwards, but feel free to experiment and see what's best for you.

Take the three strands and put them in the order that you want : in my case, red blue blue. I used a clipboard to keep them in place, but you can also attach them with tape, a Bobby pin or just tie them together.

Follow these simple steps to make the knot. It's basically the same ones as previously, the only thing you have to be careful about is to keep your strands organised at all times (or things will get messy easily) : the inner one should always be on the inside, etc.
On the pictures I indicated what way to tie the knot, and if you should go over (yellow) or under (green) the rest of the knot

This step is basically alternating over, under, over and under.
After that, the knot is done : you can now pull gently on every strand starting from the smallest one (the one on the inside) in order to keep them neatly organized. Don't pull to much yet, we still have to add two strands!

As you can see in these pictures, I clipped the two remaining strands to the clipboard on one end, and tied them together on the other end. This helped keeping them together when adding them to the existing knot.

Now that everything is in place, you can once again pull on every strand starting from the inner one to make the knot tighter. You might have to do this several times.
We you're satisfied with the result, you can unclip the knot, cut the strands on that side and add a jewellery clamp. Adding a little bit of glue can help maintaining the strands into the clamp before closing it with pliers. Smooth out your necklace one more time before doing the same on the other side. You can then add the chains of your choice. In my opinion, this design is more suited for a necklace.

Once you're confortable with this technique, you can experiment with more strands or different types of knots, some of which might be better suited for bracelets