When the mailman rang the doorbell, my dogs and kids and I ran to the door excited to see what was delivered. I knew already what was coming and was very ready for my little girl to meet her new best friend. I brought in the box and allowed our princess to open it up with me. She lost her mind with excitement when she saw the beautiful American Girl® doll waiting for her.
It was bedtime so I sent her off to sleep while I opened up the box and learned a bit more about Gabriela and her story. Gabriela is a dancer and poet with a bit of a stutter. However, she works hard to overcome her speech issues throughout the book. She becomes a driving force in her communities need to repair their community arts building and pulls off some amazing feats to accomplish the reopening. Her story was all about dreaming together and overcoming challenges and was exactly the type of story I want to share with my strong willed daughter.
When our princess finally got her hands on Gabriela, she was so excited. She had to check out her outfit and put her hair in a ponytail and even introduce her to all her other toys. Gabriela is already well loved in our family.
The drive and focus and overall need to dream together inspired me to recreate a craft straight out of the story. The book details the various fundraising efforts needed to repair the community building and one of the contributions that Gabby and her friends do is they make friendship bracelets to sell and raise money.
I first created the Dream Together printable card you see above and then came up with a simple friendship beaded bracelet to share with my little girl. I wanted to create a tutorial on how to make this easy bracelet and allow others access to print the card so that if you are inspired to give back and raise money you can create these simple friendship bracelets with the beautiful message of Dreaming Together!
- Measure out the length of the bracelet you would like to make by wrapping the string around the wrist. Add three inches to that length and then double everything and cut your strings. (Example: wrist measures 6 inches, I would add 3 more inches for a total of 9 inches and then double that to 18 inches total and cut the thread).
- Take your three pieces of thread and fold them in half. Tie a knot at the top of the folded threads about 1 inch from the top of the fold.
- Tape the knot to a table.
- Spread the threads out as you see in the photo above.
- Take the threads on the outside and cross them over each other. Move to the next color and cross those over, then the next colors.
- Repeat the above for 3 cycles and then pull two threads together and place a bead on those threads.
- Continue cross the thread colors over the bead for 3 cycles and then add another bead.
- Repeat this process until you have acquired the length of bracelet that you want.
- Tie a knot at the end of the bracelet
- Remove and wear!
I made one for both Gabby and our daughter and they love them! They turned out so good and were very easy to make. Bonus! The Dream Together printable doubles as a bookmark!
Gabriela has been an utter joy to bring into our home and learn about giving back, passion, overcoming personal struggles and making an impact. I can see exactly why American Girl® selected her as their Girl of the Year! She is just the role model children need and I am so looking forward to learning more about her stories through the coming year!
