A little surgery on the Smart Alec and future arts and crafts projects

After buying an all-black Smart Alec I decided to change out the zipper pulls from black to gold paracord. It adds a little color, and will hopefully make it easier to identify the bag quickly.

Attachment 2768

However I now have a ridiculous amount of gold-colored paracord, since I had to buy a few feet of it. Any creative ideas? (Besides a survival bracelet, which I already have one of, and that's got to be sufficient). I found a few creative ideas online, but most of the stuff wasn't what I would consider useful or attractive.

Not to threadjack, but: what is a survival bracelet? It sounds like something crafty, which immediately piques my curiosity.

Would it work as a travel clothesline, perhaps?

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Originally Posted by MaggieScratch

Not to threadjack, but: what is a survival bracelet? It sounds like something crafty, which immediately piques my curiosity.

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The survival bracelet looks like this:

Attachment 2769

with the idea being that if you unravel it in an emergency you have a long length of paracord with which to rappel down a mountain cliff, pull to shore someone trapped in river rapids, or construct a shelter... Well, I have never needed mine but I take it with me when I travel, just in case.

How does one make a survival bracelet??

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Originally Posted by rlandis

How does one make a survival bracelet??

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I bought mine from REI for about $10. But if you google it there are directions; basically it's just a bunch of knots.

Two years ago I learned how to make these at my son's summer camp during craft time. They were all the rage among the kids from the mini campers (age 3) to staffers. Though I doubt my daughter's microscopic wristlet would contain enough paracord to save anybody, lol. This makes me want to make sure that we wear ours more when we go hiking and camping.

Every time I see the title of this thread, my heart skips a beat. It's the "surgery" part. I have a panic moment when I think someone is actually altering a TB bag. Then I remember, it's okay, just the zipper pulls, and they look awesome. Whew.

This is so hypocritical of me, too, because I ripped apart a Side Effect to remove the waist straps!