Make Your Own Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatchers are a fun and inexpensive craft for children. They also have an interesting story behind them.

Dreamcatchers originate from the Native American culture.  They are shaped in a circle that represents the whole universe. The theory is that when you hang them over your bed, the good dreams slip into the middle of the dream and slide down to the feather at the bottom to the sleeping person below. The bad dreams would get caught in the dream catcher and expire when they were hit with the first rays of the sun.

To make Dreamcatchers you will need:

• a metal or wooden ring 
• clear glue
• narrow ribbon about 1 metre in length
• thick gold thread about 1 metre in length 
• beads
• feather 
• large needle

To make Dream Catchers:

1. Dab a small amount of glue onto the metal ring and glue on one end of the ribbon. Wind the ribbon around the ring until it is covered.  I purchased some thing bracelets from Kmart as I couldn’t find a big enough metal ring. The bracelets were coloured already so we would the ribbon around leaving spaces so you could see the coloured ring underneath. Then glue on the other end of the ribbon to the ring.
2. Make the web by looping the gold thread evenly around the ring. (The black lines in the picture to the right).
3. After you have gone around once, go around again, looping where the red lines are in the picture. You can add a bead on every second loop on the second time around if you like.
4. You can do a third  layer of loops if you want. We didn’t as our rings were not big enough and our gold thread was a little too thick. When you have finished your layers, tie off the end of the thread as neatly as possible.
5. Tie a large bead to a short length of gold thread and then tie it to the middle of the dream catcher.
6. To make the long tail, cut a length of thread, however long you want your tail and tie one end of the thread to a feather. You can add a few beads onto the tail if you wish. Then tie the other end of the thread onto the bottom of your dream catcher.
7. If you wish to hang up your dream catcher, you can tie another short length of gold thread to the top of the dream catcher, leaving a loop to hang it up with.

We had a great time learning about dreamcatchers and how they were used by the Native Americans.

For more information on Dream Catchers, you can read about their history here.