How do I make female friends? During the first interactions I always try to find out who that person really is behind her social mask. I ask questions about values, habits and goals. A useful question would be "why do you do it? What's so exciting in it for you?" or "what's your best memory ever?". If the answers are casual and schematic and other indications of that, I accept that the person is either too immature or in no need for a friend. I say "next!" and move on. No time to waste for incompatible people. Just be careful not to mistake a shy person from a closed one.
A great tactics for disarming people's shields is telling them right away very personal things about myself. This tactics assumes trust and they go along with it. They might feel they're in your debt and share some things of themselves - there you got a friendship running.
Play with it and you'll get better. Rejection and awkwardness is bound to follow, but hey, welcome to life
! You'll get used to it, sooner or later, willingly or not. So you might as well make a choice to calibrate right now.
Have fun making new friends
Ralph