This season has been the summer of fidget toys for my business. And chainmail hacky sacks are the latest to be added to my website. I'm excited to have multiple customization options available and some pre-set designs too.
Hacky sacks are a simple concept: take a little bead-filled bag, kick it around, and have some fun. What isn't simple was the initial planning and figuring that when into my design.
My starting point was to look at pictures of other hacky sacks, both chainmail ones that other artists had made and classic fabric ones. I wanted to make sure I made them a good size for squishing in your hand and for kicking around. Then I had to find the ideal ring size to use. Rings too big meant that the bead fillings would fall out. Rings too small meant that the hacky sacks would take me too long to make.
Once I had a rough idea of the ring size and overall bag size, I still needed to narrow down the exact row count and rings per row. I wanted a count that would divide nicely into patterns. And 24 is my favorite number to use. It can be divided evenly into lots of options such as the 6 equal sections for the rainbow hacky sack shown on the left. For the horizontal rainbow hacky sack shown on the right, I opted to make the hacky sacks one row smaller. The slightly smaller design gave me an even number of rows which I needed for certain patterns.
Actually assembling the hacky sacks looks kind of neat. I start with 9 rings around a large central ring. Then I put on the next row of 18 rings around the circle, making a little medallion-like structure. This forms the top and the bottom of the hacky sack, so two of them are needed for each one.
The next part is to make a length of European 4-in-1 chain. This piece will be added around the smaller piece from the first two steps in order to make it grow into a larger circle.
Here are both halves of the hacky sack, ready to be joined into a ball. Notice how the central spiral of the rings go in opposite directions in the two halves. Most of the hacky sacks I make use this format. Then it's just one more row to connect them. If I'm making a slightly smaller one for certain patterns, then the spirals will be in the same direction. To connect those I need to re-open and close all the rings on the outside of one of the halves, so it still takes the same amount of time.
To see what this hacky sack looks like when it's completely finished, check out the "Dappled" pattern shown on the Hacky Sack page.
Did I mention that they glow in the dark too?
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