Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
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!
