Perfect for gifts or college dorm decor, these beautiful, unique, easy-to-make dream catchers can be color-coded to match your accents. It doesn't cost any money, if you have the supplies around the house, which you may.

Additional instructions for 1/2" or 1/4" mini-dreamcacthers on step 12.

Step 1: What You Need

For this project, you will need:
-Yarn and string, the same or contrasting colors
-a ruler or tape measure, preferably for sewing
-scissors, preferably sewing scissors
-The little plastic ring that is around the neck of a screw-on milk bottle. (you get this off by prying thte left, then the right sides until it comes off. It WILL ruin your nail polish!)
-Beads of the same or contrasting color to the rest of your supplies
-A sharpie (fine-point for a speckled look, regular or thick point for a soft look)
-Feathers, three down feathers, taken from a pillow or coat. Please use feathers from a pillow or coat that you own. I don't think you want to be in jail for stealing down feathers from department store coats. Try to have the feathers be big, full, and fluffy, and all the same size. You are going to color them with sharpies, so you will need
-a plastic bag to work on. You will not be happy (and neither will your wife/mother) if it gets on your rug.

Step 2: Cut Lengths

Cut lengths of string and yarn, 30in. (76cm.) long or longer. This length works exactly perfectly for me.

Step 3: Knot

Now you need to take your plastic ring and your yarn. Tie the yarn onto the ring, with a double knot. Leave a couple of inches left over.

Step 4: Wrap

Start to wrap the yarn around the ring. Do it tightly, so as not to let the color of the ring show through.

Step 5: Tie Off and Loop

Tie the string end to the first string end, at the base, then tie them to each other again, forming a loop.

Cut off the ends.

Step 6: New Thread

Attach your thread now. To the left of the knot works best. Leave a tail.

Step 7: Weaving

This can get very confusing if you don't know what you're doing. Here you are weaving the string, the new one you just added on, all over your frame except a space in the middle. This space will have a bead hanging down into it. Try to make it look just like a real dreamcatcher. I tried to show you as many pictures as possible, hopefully it will help. If ayone finishes one, I would love to see pictures!

DO NOT CUT THE END WHEN YOU'RE DONE!

Step 8: Feather Attachments

Tie three lengths of string (cut longer than you need or this is really hard) to the frame, evenly spaced. Make sure they're properly centered or it may be very annoying to someone...

Attach two (or one) bead(s) to each strand, as shown, and fasten with knots.

Step 9: Center Bead

I don't have many pictures of this work-in-progress... in fact I have none... but I have pointed out the important parts in the picture. Tie a knot with string end where indicated. Slip on one little bead. Tie a knot on the end big enough to keep the bead on. Trim the end, NOT CLOSE.

Step 10: Feathers

It's time to color your feathers! This comes out very nicely. Fine point sharpies give you speckled feathers, wide points give you solid color. (The purple dream catcher in the original picture is made with a wide point sharpie, this one is fine point.) Make sure you stroke the feathers down, so that you agree with the little strands, and don't annoy them so they ruffle. It's sort of like petting a cat... only it won't scratch you...

Next insert the feathers into the six (or three, whichever you decided) beads that are attached to the strands that are tied onto the frame. *Pant pant* Every feather has two ends: The end that was attached to the bird and the one that was not. Push the end that was attached to the bird up through the beads, so that the beads are holding the feather onto the strings. (See figure.)

Step 11: Ta-da!!!

You now have a beautiful dreamcatcher!! Wrap it up along with a print-out version of the story of dreamcatchers (in brief,unless you want a mile-long tag) as a unique gift. Put your own spins on the traditional form. Make a red one for Valentines day, and give it to your true love! (Unless you're painfully single, like me, then you can keep it to yourself.) Experiment with textures, beads, thicknesses... Do anything you can to make it your own, and have fun! Don't get frustrated, it's not worth it. You'll get it figured out sometime!

Step 12: Varieties

There are a gazillion sizes of rings around you. I've found that pepsi bottles are ideal for medium size dreamcatchers, and the smallest I've found is the ring on the neck of a little bottle of lime juice. (The bottle is found in the supermarket, and it's shaped like a lime. It's also available in lemon form.) Pepsi rings are better than coke rings because pepsi rings aren't as thick, but they have jagged parts on the inside of the ring that may need to be trimmed. You have to use string and thread instead of yarn and string for the lime bottle ring, because it is amazingly small.

A really nice effect that I've found is to color stripes on the feathers. This comes across very nicely.'

Step 13: Hints & Tips for Mini Dreamcatchers

This step appended by Ryzellon.

Read through normal-sized-dreamcatcher directions, and then work with this step to make little 1/2" (or smaller) dreamcatchers.

Materials:
-Paperclip or jump ring - With the paperclip you'll want wirecutters, but you can make non-circle shapes, like hearts
-Thread or floss
-Superglue
-Needle
-Feathers/beads (I got my feathers from my down comforter)

Basic steps:
Get your dreamcatcher frame ready. If you're using a paperclip, bend it to the shape you want and cut the excess off with wirecutters.

Thread a needle with your string. It makes the wrapping easier. Just don't stab yourself.

If you're working really small, keep a little superglue on hand. Tie off beginnings/ends with simple single-knots and just dab a bit of glue (via paperclip or toothpick) on the beginnings/ends of the thread to keep things together.

With a few feet of thread, you can easily wrap the ring/frame, and do the internal webbing all in one go. Then you only have one beginning and end to take care of. This does make the excess string at the beginning of your wrapping kinda irritating to work with, as a trade-off.

When you're done with the webbing, you can tie some feathers or beads on.
The problem I've found is that the string is too stiff when it's only 1/2" long, so the feathers stick out a little awkwardly, but I haven't found a way around that. (Really, even with normal sewing thread, 1/2" is pretty rigid when holding a feather.)
SugarTeen52 suggests that you just shorten the length of the string so that the rigidity is obscured by the smaller size.
In any case, you may have to re-tie the pieces several times to get them to stick out at an angle that looks most natural.
Or you can superglue the feathers directly to the dreamcatcher.

If you want, stick this on an earring! They're tiny and light, especially if you used aluminum for the ring/frame. I might not try this as a charm, though, as it is pretty delicate.

Any confused questions about mini-dreamcatchers should be directed to me (Ryzellon), but overall comments and questions to the original author, SugarTeen52.