The Miley Cyrus craft craze continues! We’ve seen her embrace face paint, art supplies on her feet, and DIY tees, so it the next logical extension of her creativity was obviously jewelry. The “Wrecking Ball” singer uploaded some photos yesterday crafting with captions like “I like to lume it lume it,” and “This is how we lume it.”
But Miley is actually referring to “looming” aka the Rainbow Loom products created by Cheong Choon Ng in 2011. Each Rainbow Loom kit comes outfitted with a pegboard, a hooked tool, clips and a million tiny rubber bands that look like the type you’d pick up at the orthodontist. Miley’s not the only one into the rainbow bracelet craze–Ellen DeGeneres made a custom pair of Rainbow Loom underwear for Jimmy Kimmel, who modeled a #SuitOfTheLoom on his own show later that night. There’s a girl in England who made an entire dress out of the little rubber bands, and a Wall Street Journal trend piece covered the power-suited dads who accessorized with their bright children’s bracelets. Sure, there are some haters, but the loom craze just made us feel really good, you know? So good, in fact, that it kind of made us miss our DIY childhood crafting days. So, we decided to revisit some of favorite bracelet trends from our youth. Here’s our unofficial list of the best bracelets from the ’90s.
SLAP BRACELETS
Amazon
Not only did these come in a plethora of colors and textures (we fondly remember a fuzzy leopard print one), they possessed incredible fashion physics. It would transform from a thin sheet of metal encased in fabric, into a eye-catching accessory. How? Magic. It also introduced an element of slight pain into playtime, which given the current obsession with Fifty Shades of Grey, doesn’t seem that surprising into retrospect.
ROPE CORD BRACELETS
Amazon
Your TV boyfriend Zack Morris called, and he wants his bracelets back. That’s fine, we’ve found an updated grownup version of the classic anyhow. *hair flip*
BOONDOGGLES/LANYARDS/SCOUBIDOU/GIMP BRACELETS
Etsy
Who knew such simple bracelets had so many names? We found these here on Etsy. Lanyard bracelets had a couple of things going for them: they were customizable (the best ones had glow-in-the-dark cords, let’s be honest), came in a variety of different shapes and patterns based on your technical proficiency, and were easily tradable amongst friends. For those of you who want a one-way ticket to Memory Lane, we found you a kit.
FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS
Honestly WTF
The grandaddy of the arm candy crafting craze is the friendship bracelet. Conceived in camp, woven by girls (mostly) of almost every generation, these were basically kid currency. We wore them on our wrists everywhere (even in the shower) until they fell off, and then begged our best friend to make us another. There’s a plethora of tutorials and kits online to inspire you to make your own, but really the best ones are the given to you by your buds, which means we’ve got a couple of phone calls to make…
So for that, thanks Miley for the nostalgia. Shine on you crazy, crafting diamond. Here’s hoping we’ll run into you at adult sleepover camp so we can thank you in person.
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