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Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com
and I want to show you how to make a beaded Kumihimo bracelet
and these are our exclusive Beadaholique.com beaded Kumihimo
bracelet kits. So I want to show you how to do
one a simple 8 warp kumihimo braid
and then also show you how to add beads and how to make a spiral effect
so the kits that we currently have available are these five
spiral design pattern ones. See how this
toggle clasp works. So you've got five different color variations
and then these are in the size 8/0 bead. It creates a little narrower
effect and then we also have the slightly larger scale
braided beaded Kumihimo bracelets
I'm using using size 6/0 beads and you can see we've done a Christmas color
collection,
a metallics, a reds and purples. We're going to be adding to these but this is what we
currently are offering
and you get everything you do need to make each one of these bracelets
in the exclusive Beadaholique.com kit and I've pull the ingredients
for the pink and purple one here to show you what you gonna get in the kit
and then I'm going to show you how to make this from start to finish
To make this bracelet here you're gonna get
two tubes of beads in the color
of the kit and for this one here we've got a pretty pink bead and then we have
a purple
you're going to get a spool of cord. You're going to get way more than you actually
need
you'll have it for extra projects going forward. You'll have extra beads too
which is going to be fun and you'll see in the end how many you'll have
you're gonna get the clasp and you can see it's
a glue in clasp. So we're gonna give you some glue as well
you're actually gonna also get the bobbins
I'll open these up. You're going to get
8 bobbins, the way you open these
is just pop it open, pop them shut
and this is gonna be what you'll need to do a 8 warp
braid and then we're gonna give you a disc
as well. So it really is everything you need
to make these bracelets in this one kit. All you have to
add as for tools is a pair of scissors
which you should have around the house and a ruler
and then I'll show you how to make a weight as well. Here's a Kumihimo weight that
doesn't come with the kit
but I'll show you how to make one out of some stuff that you have at home
and then you'll need some tape as well and
a scrap piece of wire for an applicator. What's also great about this kit is you're
gonna get an instruction manual
that comes with your disk and it will actually show you how to do
a variety of different Kumihimo braids so you'll have that for future use as well
We've gone ahead and made some illustrations on how to add beads
to a Kumihimo braid which is not something that's very common and comes
with
like a standard booklet. So lots of things that are apart of this kit
It's not hard, it takes a little time to get used to how to do this but
once you get it, it's very zen-like and very enjoyable
so I do wanna show you from start to finish how to make this bracelet
so I'm gonna go ahead and clear off all the other samples
just gonna leave the one that we're gonna be making so you can refer back to it
what we're gonna start by cutting
8 equal lengths of cord
and cut 48 inches of
each. Now the common thought
is that for every one-inch of braid
you're gonna need three-inches of cord. So
if we're doing say a seven inch bracelet normally you would need
21 inches per strand here
per strand of cord. I actually like to air on the side of caution and
give you actually a lot more than that because so much comes in here
and you're going to be adding beads which actually is going to also
add to the length of cord that you'll need. This is just a standard
8 warp braid. So I like to go ahead
just be extra cautious give you more than you need because
you cannot add more cord as you go so you might as well
start with plenty. I've got one,
two, three
four, five, you'll
need three more. So we're not going to need that cord anymore
We've got our 8 strands
and this really is quite a lot for this project
If someone's gonna make say an nine inch or even an ten inch bracelet or
something like that
I want you to have enough. I don't want you to stress at the end
I have a little tip for you. A lot of people don't recommend this but
I do, saves some frustration. So we're gonna wind our cord
into our bobbin. Traditionally what you'll do is you'll just hold the cord down
wind it
and pop it shut and it does hold in place
now we will be adding quite a few beads to this and then what starts to happen
when you have a lot of beads on here
because the beads are going to rest right on the edge of the bobbin
its gonna weigh it down a little bit and as you get towards the
end of the cord it could start slipping out. So to prevent that what I like to do
is
I just take a piece of tape
take this off
I just take a piece of tape, put it on the end
of my cord and just keep it
in place. This just saves a little bit of frustration later on
so now that that's taped in place I just wind it
I'll wind it until I have about 15 inches
sticking out. It
can be approximate. It doesn't have to be exact. I'm going to repeat that step
with all my remaining cords and my remaining bobbins
and just again pop it open, pop it close
really simple
we've got all of our bobbins wound and now we want to do
is we want to add beads to them. You always wanna preload your bobbins
with beads before you actually start your braiding. So we're gonna
do the spiral pattern. So we want four of our cords to have
pink beads and we want four of our cords to have purple beads
I'm gonna spread out my beads
I'm going to add
50 beads to each
bobbin. Now the tip of the cord
is actually stiff enough that you can just pick up the beads right
directly on to it, you don't need a needle. It's quite easy
if you have a big eye needle at home
which I have here so I can show you
It's got a big eye and what you can do
if it's easier for you, you can thread the end of the cord
right through that big eye. Pull it down to the bottom
You can put your beads on that way. If it's
easier for you you can do that as well. Both ways work
so we want 50 on each bobbin
count how many. We have
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 we need quite a few more
I've got fifty
onto my cord now. Remove my needle or if you didn't use one to begin with
you don't need to do that. You just want to let them slip down
to the bottom. I'm going to put this aside right now. I'm going to repeat
that step
with the pink beads and another three cords and bobbins
so as you can see I have gone ahead and added 50
beads to each strand. So I've got four bobbins with cords and beads
in purple and then I've got four
in pink. So I want you to take
the ends and we're gonna put all the ends together
so that they're even
for the pink
and the purple. We're not going to allow any of the beads
slip off when you do this. See what we've got here
and we're gonna tie a simple
overhand knot with our cord ends
so hold our Kumihimo disk
take the knot and place it
going from the printed side of the disk, down
through the hole to the non printed side
and we're just gonna grab it. Now it's time to line up
our cords on our disk and you can see it's got these little
placement dots at the 32, 8, 24
and the 16. Now all of this that I'm going to tell you here is also included in your
instructions that will come with the kit
so if you purchase a kit or bought it as a gift
someone will be able to follow this but I wanna show you how to do it here on
the video
so to make a spiral what we want to is
position the same color to the left and the right of the 32
and to the left and the right of the 16 and then we want it position the other color
to the left and the right of the 8 and the left and the right
of the 24. Start by taking one of our cords
and positioning it to the left of the 32
and here it happen to be a purple one. So now I wanna go ahead
take another purple cord. It could get a little tangled in here so you do wanna
pay attention to that
I one another purple cord
to the right of the 32 and you can see I'm just pulling the cords
down into these notches. So then I got a pink
bead selection
I'm going to position it to the side of
the 8. I want to find
another pink one
position it to the other side of the 8
and then I want my two other pinks
to go over to the opposite side and my two purples
to go down below
to one side of the 16 into the other side of the 16. Those are both purple
we're going to do the pinks
to either side of the 24. Now if you're doing one or the other bracelets that we have
where it's just a bead assortment, it's not trying to do a spiral
you're not have to worry about positioning pinks or purples
or teals and golds
because you're not going to be creating that. It won't matter that the correct
colors are opposite of each other because they're all going to be the same
so we've got all of our cords lined up in their starting positions
now this is a an awful lot of dangling bobbins to work with
so I'm going to wind these up a little bit. All I'm going to do is
pop open my bobbin just wind it slightly
I don't want it too tight. If I want to loosen it I can just pull it down,
push it up. I just want it a little less
cord there dangling
I didn't have to wind that one. I scoot it.
That looks pretty good. I'm about ready to start. So now all I have to do is
apply a weight
to that knot and what the weight does is it helps to pull down your braid
as you're braiding. So your gonna be braiding here in a second and you'll
see this braid emerge and it's actually gonna feed through the hole and
come out here. The weight helps to keep it nice and uniformed
and to help pull it down through the center hole
Not included in the kit but a handy tool if you do you really get into
Kumihimo is
a Kumihimo weight. It's got some heft to it
and you just clamp it onto that knot
now if you don't have this I want to show you how to just make a weight with something
you probably have around the house
I have just a binder clip and then you get the cord of course that comes with
the kit. I going to cut off a little length of it
and then you just wanna find something you have around the house. I have a dapping
dowel here. It's got some nice heft to it as well
I'm going to use this but if you don't have it you can make a little baggy of about 20
pennies
You could find a heavy pen. Just something that's
got some weight to it. Just go through your junk drawer
and see what you've got. You going to go ahead
tie the cord around it
and then tie it to the binder clip as well
so then what you would do is take this clip now
turn this over and attach it
to that knot
I'm going to use a Kumihimo weight
but this also works just fine and you can with what you
have around your house. I'm going to clamp
a weight to that knot and now
you're ready to start working. So when you begin
you wanna start with the 16 towards you
32 up top, 8 to the right
and the 24 to the left and we're gonna do
a simple 8 warp braid without beads to begin with
and to do that we're going to take the warp
so each one of these is called a warp. So each cord
is called a warp. Take the warp
to the left of the sixteen and position it
to the left of our cord right here
It's actually going to the left of the 31 in this case but
eventually you're not need to look at what the numbers are, you're just gonna look at where
the cords are
so then we're gonna take the cord to the right of the 32
pull it out of the slot and go to the right
of the fifteen. Rotate our
disk counterclockwise and repeat that same
action. So take the cord that's to the left
and place it up top to the left
take then the cord that's to the right
this is to the right of the 8 in this
instance and put it to the right of the 23
so basically you're just going left, left, right,
right, so left up to the left slot, right
down to the right slot and rotate. It's the exact same
action over and over again, nothing is going to change
so the cord left of the 31 goes up to the left
of the 14, the cord to the right
of the 15 comes down to the right of the
30, rotate and only rotate one
segment at a time and always counterclockwise
to the left of the 7
goes up to the left of the 22, right
cord comes down to the right side so you always
end with two cords down, two cords up
and rotate, left
up, right down
rotate, left
up, right down, same
exact motion. If your bobbins get
stuck help them out
right comes down
rotate. Now a tip if you're ever gonna stop your Kumihimo braiding
midway, say you've gotta go
get dinner out of the oven, have to run an errand, whatever's happening
make sure you put one cord up
so that was the first half of the sequence, left up
and then stop. I could put this down right now
and I can walk away for an hour, walkway for a couple days
I will know where I left off because I've got three up top and
only one at the bottom. So I'm not gonna be confused
I could come back and be like oh I need to finish this sequence so I'll take the
right one
and put it down and then I'll just continue
for this particular project
because we have a glue in clasp and we're gonna be using beads
we wanna have a good length that is non beaded
because we're not going to be able to put the beaded segment into that
glue in clasp
we're gonna braid without beads
for about an 10 inch and a half. When I refer to measurements
I'm meaning the amount of braids that's going to come through this bottom hole
complete. So we want to keep doing this for a while
so I'm gonna put one cord up so I can pause now
the beads are heavy, they'll you weigh the cords down so they do
tend to get a little longer as you work. If this is annoying
you pop open your bobbins
take some of beads and slide that into the bobbin
wind it and pop it shut. You'll now have a shorter length
to work with and they won't get tangled as much. I'm going to do that right
now
it's just a preference thing and it's very easy to pull these beads
back out of this bobbin when you're going to want to use them again
you see I just had a few here
I know I'll have to pull more out in just a little bit but for now it's fine
and again this is why we taped
our ends just so that the bobbin didn't accidentally unwind on us and all of
our beads
fall off. I'm gonna continue with a
little shorter threads makes that a little bit easier for me and I know
where I left off
So I'll just continue my braiding
now I'm holding this kind of high for the video and I'm sitting at a table
I tend to like to just do this on my lap, it's a lot easier so'll just hold it a
little bit lower
but whatever works for you
this does become very zen-like because it is just repetitive action
It's really quite
easy
I'll stop and show you what we're starting to get. So if you look down in here very
closely you'll see
a really nice pretty uniform round braid
and that's what we want and this eventually
is going to fit into the glue in
center of our toggle clasp
I'm going to braid about an inch and an half. You're not gonna need that much but again
I'm trying to make this a little bit
easier for you. I don't want to cut measurements too short
are too close. So I'm going to just keep braiding
I have about an inch and a half of that solid
braid without beads.
I've got inch or a little bit over . You don't have to be too precise. You're
actually gonna to be using
this part like right up here but easier if you have more to work with and hold on to
when you do the finishing and you actually attach your ends
so now we're ready to add our beads and you want to determine how
long of a bracelet you want. So this bracelet here
including the clasps, the clasp goes into about there
it's almost 7 and a half inches
you'll notice the braided portion is six inches
so the clasp is adding just over an inch
so if you want about 7, 7 and a quarter inch bracelet
you'll braid six inches, if you want 8 a inch bracelet, 8 and a
quarter, go about seven inches. Just have that in mind before you start
You'll have plenty of supplies to make whatever size bracelet you want
I'm going to start adding our beads and the technique is not going to change
one bit. All that is going to change is you're going to slip a little bead in there
each time you take a warp up to its next notch
and down to a notch. So you'll notice I stopped here
with my three cords up top, so I'll pick up where I left off
and I just take the cord down
rotate. This is the first time I add beads
so find a bead
pull it up along the length of my cord
let it drop
into the well. What I want it to do is to just
catch under the warp
that it's going underneath and crossing over and I'm just gonna
continue as if there was no bead there just the same technique. That's gonna
go up to the left
slot and then for the next one it's the same thing
so we're gonna go right, down to right just as before
but we're going to slip a little bead in there. Take a bead
slide it up. Slide it down
drop into the well. I'm not gonna just go like
this
I need to make sure it catches
make sure either via gravity or my fingers that it touches
under that warp and then continue
with your cord and make sure that it goes to in this case the right
of the five. Like I said you're gonna get to the point where you're not
really going to pay attention to the numbers
and we're going to rotate counterclockwise, same exact thing as
before
so left up to left but with the bead
drop it in there, catches under
goes back up to the top
same thing
add another bead
fall into the well, rotate
this is really all there is to it
only thing that might hang you up is if you just aren't careful and
these don't actually catch underneath the warps that they're gonna
go
under and then over. That's the only time your pattern is not going to look right
if you just go like. So just make sure it settles in there
before you continue placing the cord
just doing one at a time
here's a little trick I'm not gonna say it until I position my cord up top
see how this is kind of getting a little bit off-center
if it does that pull your cords
you can reposition it. You want that to stay in the center
and I like to keep my weight on the whole time
some people take theirs off. I just make sure I'm getting a really nice uniform
tension and thickness to my braid
doing beaded kumihimo
adding the beads is not included in the instruction manual that comes with your
disk
It's a little bit more advanced, so what we've done is we've gone ahead and
printed illustrations for you that are going to come with the kit
that are gonna show as a reminder if you
saw this video it'll just give you a little refresher on
making sure that these drop into the well and that they catch under the warp
that they need to. If you're giving this as a gift and worried that people won't
know how to do this because it's not in the instruction manual we do
provide illustrations and I really am doing the same technique
as before and just adding the beads. I'll add a couple more and I'll show
you what we're starting to
get in terms of a pattern to our braid
flip it over, you can see they're starting to spiral
and as I go they're just going to continue to spiral as you see in the finished
example here
and so you'll just braid as long as you want it to be
remember the clasp is going to add a little over an inch
so take that into account
and measure your wrist ahead of time or if giving it as a gift maybe a
standard size of about a seven and a half inch bracelet might be good
just keep adding your beads and keep braiding
until you end up with your desired length and I'll show you how to
finish up your bracelet
I've been braiding for a while now and you can see I have this nice spiral pattern going
I'll do a couple more just to help reinforce the techniques. I
course left with my three strands up top
drop another bead in there
rotate, drop a bead
you can see how this is looking
one more
I'll show you how much length I have since I'm a stopping point
again I'm doing this held over a table, you're gonna have this
in a comfortable position just probably right about your lap
see how much I have. So I'm not gonna
measure the non beaded part. I just want to measure the beaded part
might be a little easier to do it like this
and we can see that I have
about six inches. For this particular bracelet I think that's good
so let me then just add
another bead to complete
my sessions. Two at the top, two at the bottom
and I want to create another segment
of non beaded Kumihimo, to do that we're just going to the same thing that we've been
doing all along
but skip adding beads. Left to the left
right down to the right, rotate
left up to the left, right
down to the right
If it gets off center pull your chords
so they go back in place
I'll do one more to show you where we're at
so if you can look right in there you can see it's starting to generate a braid
without the beads
which again is gonna be narrow enough to put into our glue in clasp
and if you want at this point you could remove your bobbins
you could remove your beads and your bobbins because you're just going to do
non beaded
kumihimo. If it helps to keep your cord, if you have a lot of length like we
do
I had to start out with more than what's really needed you can keep the bobbins
on there but if say your doing it with a little less cord and maybe your bobbins are
slipping
then you can just remove your bobbins at this point
but don't cut your cords. I'm keeping them on there
just because we have a bit wand in there
actually since I have three
up top I want these little tighter just because they're tangling
okay
that should go more smoothly. If you wanted to make a larger
bracelet than what I am making here in the example
bead a couple more inches of kumihimo braid by starting with a longer length
of cord
you're gonna have plenty in there to
go ahead and make you
longer bracelet without ever having to worry about running out
I just don't wanna run out cord
so I'm gonna keep doing this until I have about an
inch of non beaded kumihimo on
this end as well. So I've completed about an
inch of the non beaded kumihimo braid. You can see I actually have beads
left on here from the original fifty that I placed so if you were gonna make
a longer bracelet than the one that's here which is going to end up being about seven
inches long
you'd have plenty of beads to do so. If you ever run
out of beads, if you don't preload enough, just unwind your bobbin,
add some more, wind it back up, really simple. So I am ready to remove my
cords
from my kumihimo disk. You never do this step until your
absolutely sure that you're ready to finish up the bracelet because you're
not going to be able to put them back on
where you want them to go if you take them off and then
you try to replace them it's just not going to work. So be sure that you're all
finished
take a piece of tape
going to pinch
the end of my braid and pull
my cords out of my disk. Pull it through a little bit
and then right at the end I'm going to put some tape
over my cords
lay it just a little bit over the braided area too
snip my cords
these can now go away
I'll put these beads back in my container for another use
now that we finished our braiding it's time to add our clasp
and to do that you need your E6000 glue, you need a toothpick
or a piece of wire as an applicator, some tape
and your scissors. So to start what we need to do
tape our ends. I'll take about
three-quarters of an inch of tape and I'll place it right
over the non beaded braided portion
of our bracelet, you wanna make the tape
fairly tight against it and just wrap it around
and I like to roll out a little bit just to make
sure it's secure and do that on the other side as well
maybe a little too much tape, you don't want it to be too bulky
same thing so I'm going to line the tape up
right where the beads began and just
wrap it around
you'll notice that the well is about a quarter and an inch deep or so
that's how much we want to cut
our braid. This can be a little nerve-racking because you
are cutting right through the tape and the braid
and do that on the other side as well. So now you just need to attach a clasp
open up the E6000 glue
take the lid which has a little point on it to puncture the glue
and then take your applicator scoop out
a fairly generous amount, put it into the well
of your clasp, make sure it's getting coated
and now we're just going to stick our end inside of there
and it can be a little difficult to be honest. It is a tight fit
but it will work so just keep maneuvering and manipulating it until it goes
in
set that aside to dry and then you're gonna do the other side
as well and when that's all done you're gonna end up
with a finish bracelet that looks like this
the clasp is good and it's secure in there and it just
opens by working the toggle bar
around the spiral. I want to bring back now
these last couple
bracelets to show you all the color variations again. Remember you have
the ones which did not have the spiral and you just place the beads randomly
on the cords when you do these. You don't have to worry about any particular positioning
so here's the four designs that we currently have, got the Christmas,
the red, metallics and the purples. You see these are a little bit
larger size bead than the spirals and then for the spirals
we've got five designs and one with a gold clasp here
but exact same process to make all the different patterns
as you did in this video here. So I hope you enjoyed this video
it showed you how to make the Kumihimo beaded
spiral bracelet which is an exclusive kit from Beadaholique.com
Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!