How to Braid Beaded Kumihimo and Make a Bracelet

	Kumihimo Round Mini Disc Disk For Japanese Braiding and Cording SKU: XTL-6113 $4.39
	The Beadsmith Kumihimo Braiding Kit For Beginners - Easy To Learn! SKU: XTL-6107 $37.99
	Fiskars 5 Precision Tip Scissors - Super Sharp SKU: XTL-5700 $7.45
	Beadalon Large Beading Mats - Prevent Bead Rolling 13 X 18 Inch (Set of 2) SKU: XTL-9935 $6.75
	Toho Round Seed Beads 8/0 55 'Opaque Turquoise' 8 Gram Tube SKU: JSH-0037 $2.25
	Toho Round Seed Beads 8/0 928 'Rainbow Rosaline/Opaque Purple Lined' 8 Gram Tube SKU: JSH-0134 $2.55
	Super-Lon, S-Lon, Cord - Size 18 Twisted Nylon - Turquoise / 77 Yard Spool SKU: XCR-4246 $4.85
	Super-Lon, S-Lon, Cord - Size 18 Twisted Nylon - Purple / 77 Yard Spool SKU: XCR-4244 $5.85

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I want to show you how to make a beaded Kumihimo bracelet. This here is what we're going to be making in this video and it is a eight warp bracelet and I've added beads to each of the eight warps. The supplies you're going to need for this project is a ruler to measure out your cord, you need a glue-on clasp. There's a little well in there where we're going to stick our braid. We're going to use some E6000 to glue that braid in place. You need a pair of scissors and some bobbins. I'll show you how to use these in just a moment. I've got some super lon cord. I've got teal and purple and I've got matching beads here. These are toho seed beads in size 8/0. I'm going to limit my color palette to two. It'll make it a little bit easier to see what's going on and it'll make this wonderful spiral pattern. And then I need my braiding disk. You'll get an instruction sheet in with the disc when you purchase it. It's not going to show you how to do beaded Kumihimo but it will show you how to do a bunch of different braids which you can adapt to kumihimo very easily. Then last but not least I have created a little handy dandy weight for myself. You need to weight down your Kumihimo so that your braid is coming through the bottom here which you'll see in a moment. It needs to be weighted. So I had just taken this binder clip I tied some rat tail around it and then this weight is actually from my dapping set but you can use whatever you have around at home that gives you any really good anchor. So to begin what you do first is measure out some of you super lon cord. For the bracelet I want to make about a seven haif to eight-inch bracelet. So I'm going to measure thirty inches of super lon and this is actually going to give him more than enough. I'm going to cut that and I'm need four of this color and then four purple because we're going to have eight warps. So four for each color. So go ahead and measure yourself out all eight. Once you got all eight measured out. I've got four purple and four teal thirty inches long each. I'm going to tie them together. Now we do have another video from Beadaholique.com showing you how to do the basic eight warp Kumihimo without beads. I would suggest going ahead taking a peek at that video. Maybe trying the standard without beads before you attempt it with beads because the beads are just another step and sometimes I find when you're learning a new process it's a little bit easier to go back to the basic. Learn that first and then add on a new component. So I've got all my tails lined up. What I want to do now is I want to tie a simple overhand knot pretty close to the end Just like that so that all my strands stay together tug that. Just to keep everything straight I'm going to go ahead and slide the tail through the middle and I'm going to clamp it with my weight. You don't have to do this step right now I find this is a little bit easier just because it keeps my strands anchored someplace on the table. So now I'm gonna go ahead and preload my beads onto my Super-Lon cord. So to do that I'm going to take the end of my cord. You can use a big eye needle if you like. I've found I don't really need one. Then you want to put fifty color coordinating beads onto one of your strands and put fifty purple beads onto one of my purple strands. Now after you've got all fifty beads loaded onto your strands go ahead and scoot them down towards the middle and take one of your bobbins just pop it open take the end hold it with your thumb wind it couple times around the bobbins then scoot some of your beads down wind then around the bobbin. Wind a little bit more scoot a few more beads wind a little bit more and then pop your bobbin shut. I've done this where I have maybe fifteen beads or so and about six seven inches hanging below this surface plane of my Kumihimo and that's what you want to start. Go ahead and do that for each of your strands with fifty beads per strand and make sure that they're color coordinated and then once that's done we're going to position our Super-Lon cord and start our braiding. Once you added all your beads onto your Super-Lon cord and you've got those all in the bobbins we've got some beads along with the cord wond into the bobbins you want to organize your Kumihimo disk. Lay your strands out on it. So I want to show you basically what we have here just so you can see. I got the weight and I've got the little clamp you make whatever type of weight will work for you. This is just kind of a makeshift one. You see I've got approximately the same length of string coming out each of the bobbins and I've got some beads. You're going to able to add beads as you go. So don't worry about it if you have twelve beads or twenty beads or anything sticking out the bobbin at this point You can add them as you go from that well, that reserve that you have within the bobbin. So now we need to do is flip this over so that the Kumihimo disk is facing you and you want the sixteen at the bottom and thirty two at the top. I'm going to let the weight drop down behind. I'm going to hold the little knot essentially in my hand. It's best just below the circle. Now I need to straighten these guys out and organize them so it can get a little tricky I'd like to usually just pick a color such as this purple one seed bead purple right here Pull on it until it comes out of the strands and I'm in a place that's one to one side of the top dot. So one side slot between the thirty-one and the thirty two and grab another purple and put it up top on the other side of the dot between the thirty two and the thirty one. I'm going to take the green or turquoise I'm going to put it to one side of the twenty four I'm going to take another turquoise and I'm looking at my dot. Try to pick ones which are near the right edge so when you tied your knot your strands will be coming out. Some will be closer to here. Some will be closer to here Try to take ones that are somewhat close to the edge I'm working on I found a green one and I put that to the other side of the twenty-four dots that's between twenty-three and twenty four and I'm going to put two more purples down below. So one to one side of the sixteen dots and one to the other side. And for my remaining two teals I'm going to go ahead untangle them Put one to the one side of the dot between the seven and eight and one to the other side between the eight and the nine. I can tell my little weight has slipped out so I'm going to connect quickly re-tie that So that should hold. So this is what we have now. So we've got the bobbins hanging below with all the beads down at the bottom. We've got our knot just in that little well, it's not quite up top it's sunken down just a little bit got our weight We're ready to start braiding So what you want to do have the disk again facing you with the sixteen at the bottom, the thirty two at the top. Take the left strand from the bottom and move it up to the left of the top two strands. Take the right strand and move it to the bottom right. We're gonna turn it. Not adding any beads right now. So this is the standard eight warp kumihimo braid. Take the bottom left thread and take it to the top left Take the top right thread and take it to the bottom right and I'm going to twist a quarter turn counter-clockwise. So I'm gonna take the bottom left purple thread and take it up the top left and then take the top right and take it to the bottom right quarter turn counter clockwise and you want to have this off the ground so that the gravity is going to work in your favor and this way is gonna pull your braid down and all your threads are gonna be nice and tight bottom left to top left top right to bottom right. Turn. bottom left to top left top right to bottom right and turn. Your just going to do that basic braid for about fifteen passes or so anywhere between twelve and twenty. I just going to create a little bit of a standard braid before I add my bead and that's going to help me when I add my clasp. Up. Down. Turn. Up. Down. Turn. And then if you ever want to stop Go ahead and take the bottom left one up put it top left. You can put down your Kumihimo and walk away and when you come back you notice you got one strand at the bottom three at the top. So now you know when you go back you need to bring the right one down to the bottom right. So make sure you do that when you leave. You always make sure you leave it so you have a three and one so you can easily comeback and not lose your space. I'm going to do this a few more times. So if you can see this it's probably going to be a little bit hard but I've got a bit of a braid started there and it's about quarter of an inch maybe a little bit more has just about a quarter of an inch So now to add my first bead I'm going to take one bead scoot it up away from the rest grab the Super-Lon cord here so that preventing any other beads from following scoot that bead all the way down to the bottom and I want to wrap it just so that it's under the first warp that I need to pass over with this thread. So I'm doing the same technique where I go bottom left, top left. Nothing changed in my weaving pattern but what changed was that I added a bead. Do the same thing over here scoot one bead down hold the others track it underneath the first warp I need to go over and pull my thread down do a quarter turn Do the exact same thing Scoot one bead up let it fall down into that well, let gravity work slip it under the first warp in the past over and continue putting your bottom left to the top left. Now we need to do the other side top right needs to go to bottom right. Scoot one bead down. Catch it under the first warp of the purple that you need to pass over with the teal super-lon anchor and secure that thread down bottom right turn single bead bottom left, top left top right bottom right scoot that bead down let it trap under the first of the teal threads your going to passover and keep repeating this process over and over and that's all there is to it. I'm going to take a pause for a minute Now I want to show you, you know you're doing it right when all your stands are again back to their original positions so you know you nave not missed a step or anything I need to turn this counterclockwise I need to scoot one bead down and make sure that I stopped with my three ends up at the top before I take a pause. So I'll show you how our braid is looking. You can see right in there we are getting a nice spiral effect. It's coming along quite quickly and here is the original that we did without beads just a little bit of space so that we will be able to place on a glue-on clasp Now I want to show you how to add some more beads to your strand So I've got two more here and I know I need some more. I'm going to pop open my bobbin scoot some beads wind my bobbin a little bit more and pop it close and that's all you need to do and that's why you don't have to worry about it in the beginning that all your bobbins have exactly the same amount of beads coming out of them and if you want to lengthen it, pull down on the bobbin rotate it a little bit That's going to give you some more room. So you just continue in the same fashion we've been doing until your bracelet reaches you desired length. I'd recommend about six-and-a-half inches of beadwork because you're clasp is gonna add about another inch. So if you have a seven-and-a-half inch wrist you want to bead about six a half inches at the actual beadwork. As you can see I've now beaded about six-and-a-half inches of my Kumihimo beaded braid and now I'm going to do what I did in the beginning where I did a little bit of braiding without any beads You see my last couple of weaves had the beads on them but now I'm just not going to do that and it's going to go ahead continue as normal in the same pattern. So left up right down not adding any beads. I still have my weight on the bottom of this. Going to help with my tension I'm going to do this for just a little while just so that when I attach my clasp it's not right up against the beads I have a little bit of room to work with. That looks good to me so at this point I'm going to go underneath and grab my braid. This is the non-beaded part now hold it pop off my strands go ahead and remove my weight still holding onto it pull it through the disk We have a couple of different ways you can secure this One is use some scotch tape and that's what we showed you how to it in our first non-beaded Kumihimo video. You can do that. I'm doing that for this one right here. I'm going to show you another method which also works well. Take a little tape put it directly over my braid I'm just gonna pinch So that's secure. Now this is one method. This is how we're going to attach this particular bracelet because we don't have a lot of extra room in our clasp. This is gonna fit pretty much right inside there and I don't have any extra space But let's say I had a deep bigger well like this is a three millimeter, let's say we had a six millimeter clasp or an end cap and I wanted to bulk up my braid so it would fit that better what I could do this time I can just go ahead and cut this What I could do is take a little bit of extra string and I can just hold my threads that I could wind them wind them like this. Tie it off and then go ahead glue it in here as normal. The avantage is if you need to fill in the extra space, fill in that gap if we had such a gap, you can just keep winding and winding making it thicker and thicker so that it actually sits in there better but we're not going to do this for this one do the tape method I'm going to now go ahead trim my tape and I'm going cut about, look at my clasp, I have probably a good fouth of an inch in there I'm going to cut about a forth of an inch. I'm going to take some E6000 glue and I'm using to tail end of a magic pick and you can use whatever you like, a scrap piece of wire or a tooth pick works really well I happen to have this on my desk I use it and it cleans off really nice the back end of the magic pick not the pick end I got some E6000 on there I'm going to put it over the tip around the side a little bit, it's gonna spread out when I put the clasp on anyways I'm going to fit the glue-on clasp right on top shimmy it down and then I can either wipe away that glue right now let it dry So there's one half of our clasp attached. Now to do the other side do the exact same thing. First remove this knot you can either cut off the knot if you have enough room or it feels like the knots gonna get in your way, you just untie your knot I'm holding onto my weaving especially the area that doesn't have the beads. It's really easy to grab just so it doesn't unravel on me. You take some tape again same process wrap the tape around it cut these guys off because their in my way trim it squish it and then cut it about a fourth of an inch then take your E6000 put some on the tip take your clasp put it on top and push down and there we go and we have completed our bracelet So now I actually have two matching ones. So two gifts for friends. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!