Beadaholique Live Class: Kumihimo

	Kumihimo Square Plate For Japanese Flat Braiding SKU: XTL-6114 $3.19
	Gator Weight For Kumihimo Braiding - 1.6 Ounces (1 pcs) SKU: XTL-6063 $9.49
	Magnetic Clasps, Tube Cord Ends Fits 6.2mm Cord, Silver Plated (1 Set) SKU: FCR-4246 $2.29
	Kumihimo Thread Bobbin, Flexible Plastic 2 1/2 Inch (12 Pieces) SKU: XTL-6196 $6.19

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi everyone it is Kat and I'm back here with Julie and we are here to talk to you all about kuma hey so I'm excited and it's a weary we're you know doing these live classes and it's so great you guys get to interact with us and as we're kind of talking here feel free to ask questions and we'll be answering them live for you because I'm excited to talk about kumihimo it's something we do a lot around here it is it's really one of our favorite technically is and I know from the questions that we get and the feedback it's one of your guys's favorite techniques that's why we were really excited to do a class on it and it's just something we've had you know in our minds to do for a while now and we finally were able to pull it together and we pulled a lot of different kumihimo supplies here are different project examples that we're gonna show you we're also going to teach you how to do a kumihimo in this class yeah that's gonna do some beaded round kumihimo doing an 8 warp braid and I'm gonna do some flat kumihimo without beads showing you how to do a 10 warp braid and we do have other videos at beadaholique.com as well as on our youtube channel show you how to add beads to the flat braid as well so we've got a lot to cover and it's gonna be a lot of fun yeah a lot of fun variations and like Julie was just saying we have videos on everything that we're going to show you here so if you miss something and want to see it again head over to beadaholique.com or you can find us on our YouTube channel and be sure to subscribe cuz you'll get all the latest videos yep and everything you see here you can also buy at beadaholique.com so you can have a lot of fun yourself playing all right so let's go ahead and get started and before we get started into making kumihimo I want to talk about our giveaway that we have so if you joined us before you know that we give away a little prize to someone who tunes in live with us here so I know this is look super exciting because I'm gonna have a three bags here but what this is gonna be and I have Julie showing it here so in this big kit you're gonna be able to make this bracelet so what we wanted to do is really give you guys everything that you're going to need to make this bracelet the only thing that you need to provide is a toothpick or a scrap a wire and a pair of scissors yeah so that is all for this and then we do have another one here and this is going to be a lovely gold and it's going to feature the magatama beads yes so this is again kumihimo but look how different it really looks so really fun so you'll get that and then we have another one here and this is gonna be just a very traditional spiral kumihimo so we'll kind of be showing you what that looks like a little bit later all right so you are gonna get one full kit here which includes the disc and all the instructions and your bobbins and glue and then you're gonna get these little guys here and these are called refill kits so what's great is if you discover kumihimo and you discover that you like it you don't have to go and buy the big kit every time you can buy the refill kits because you're already gonna have the tools to make kumihimo alright so this is our giveaway so all you need to do to win none is just leave a comment let us know where you're tuning in from if you have a question that enters you as well and be sure to just kind of keep those comments coming throughout the class and we'll announce our winner live here on the air yeah and if you have questions too you know definitely leave those for us this is your chance to really ask us we'll try to answer them live here and we'll get to as many as we can but if you have questions about kumihimo definitely ask them and we do have Rachel behind the scenes here who's helping us so she's gonna be giving us those questions and then also providing links and answering questions as well and thank you again for joining us I don't know if I've said that yet thank you thank you so I think Kat is gonna start right in yeah with a traditional eight warp kumihimo braid and she's gonna go from start to finish on this one at least for the set up and how to do the braiding and the beadwork as well yes alright so one of the materials that we love to use here for our kumihimo is s LAN cord so you can see that I have a spool of that right here and what I've done is I've just taken three feet and I've cut eight strands so this is how thick it is you can just kind of see that in my hand there so I have eight cords because like Julie was saying I'm going to be making an eight warp so what I'm gonna do is just gather all my ends on one side and just simply tie an overhand knot very simple there pull that through and that will serve as my little anchor point there so I have all my cords tied in one so now you can do this in a couple of different ways but the way I like to do it is I'm going to take my little Gator weight here and this has a little weight to it a little hook on the end but a little clamp on the top so what I'm gonna do is just open that clamp and set my little knot right inside and now I can take this weight and drop it down into the center of my kumihimo disk now you can see here I wanted to use the small ones that you could really get nice and up and close here but we do have a larger disc as well so I just want to kind of take a moment to show you that right next to it but it is the same and you can see that the kumihimo disk has these 32 little notches where those cords are going to go and they're gonna move around the disk to create that beautiful braiding technique alright so what I'm gonna do now is because I'm using it the same color cord and I'm just gonna show you a very simple technique you always want to start by getting your cords into the notches that surround those little dots there on the side so you can just see that I'm just kind of placing them in there now if you're doing a spiral pattern you'll need to place them into a different pattern and what we've done on the beadaholique website is to kind of show you a couple different examples and we'll kind of be talking about that a little bit later of how to get certain spirals so what you're gonna do and I'm actually gonna flip these two so they're less tangled there for me alright so this is that sort of set up stage I'm just gonna tighten it so that you can see that there's a good tension there on my weight alright so what I'm gonna do now is just kind of set this to the side and I'm gonna take one of my cords here and for this I'm going to be using some a toe toe hoe seed beads so I just wanted to pick a couple of contrasting colors here and I'm just gonna add just a couple of beads here onto each strand I'll just add five alright so now that I've added my beads I'm going to take my bobbin and these are nice little plastic bobbins here that will hold your cord and again these are the miniature ones we do have a little bit larger ones which I'll show you in a minute and I'm just gonna wind that bobbin or wind the cord around the bobbin until I have I'd say about six inches or so kind of sticking and I'm gonna leave my beads outside of my bobbin because I only have a few if you're loading up a lot more you can wrap your beads inside there just to keep them nice and tight and then my bobbin will stay as I'm braiding all right so I'm gonna do this actually for each of my cords here so one by one but as I'm doing this because it's the same technique I'm gonna have Julie talked to you guys a little bit about some of the things that you can do with kumihimo all right so there's a lot of variety that you can do with kumihimo you can make bracelets you can make necklaces we've seen earrings it's really the sky's the limit with this braiding technique and so I'm gonna focus on some of the examples we have here on our table as Kat is winding her bobbins so here we have a really pretty wrap bracelet we actually have this in a variety of color ways as well and this here is a kit so you can buy this where all the beads in the class when everything has been coordinated for you but you can see how long this is so what's great about kumihimo is your length it can be as long as you want you can even do a belt you can do so much with it necklaces and it's really dictated by how long you cut your strands initially and how many beats you Anna add so you're gonna want to definitely cut your links to however long you want them you're not gonna be able to add more length later once they've been cut but you can definitely start with very long links and just wanting to into your bobbin so we've got wrap bracelets you can do focal here are a couple other kids that we have where we've done a spiral focal with bicone beads I love how that looks this is really nice and clean yeah and that's just beet placement that is just where you're placing your beads on the strands before winding them into the bobbins and then you see we've got these beads you can do really unusual these are Czech glass beads you can check them out in our Czech glass bead section of our website beadaholique.com and these are projects up on our site here are some other examples again with really pretty focal x' and so you're seeing that you there's just a lot of variety that you can do and of course there's so many wonderful beautiful beads out there that it's just really the sky is the limit I'm going to show you these guys over here now here's an example of flat cáñamo so if you look at the braid itself it is flat it's not round and that's what I'm going to be showing you in a little bit how to do and then you see we've added beads to the center we do have videos showing how to add beads to the center and then also how to add beads to the outer edge of flat Kamini MO you can work with chain so here we've actually just done the same exact technique that you're gonna be seeing Kat do we just started it a little bit differently because it's chained and then we braided it in the same manner so one thing that's nice about kumihimo is whether you're doing beaded or non beaded the technique is actually the same you're just altering whether you're a slipping a little bead in there and then here is our most recent launch of kits so these just launched today and these are kumihimo bracelets using a spiral pattern with these really pretty czech glass beads and seed beads and you can see they're different sizes because i really want to show that you can make these really whatever size you want and there's just a really pretty pretty design with a magnetic clasp and a bunch of different colors and so and when you get a kit you're gonna get all the beads you're gonna get the the spool of cord the s l-- on the clasp and then i do want to point out here here's a little quick tip as Kat is winding her bobbin mm-hmm in this particular kit you do get this little twisted wire needle but if you are considering doing some kumihimo with a bead that has a little bit of a smaller hole you can just use a twisted wire needle and I'll show you how that would work do a quick little demo here so twisted wire needle has a nice big eye to it much bigger than a beading needle you just slip your s LAN on to it and then you could go ahead and take your bead pull it on to it and just pull it down so that's a great way of getting beads onto the s LAN cord very quickly and very easily especially if they have maybe have a hole that's a little bit smaller than say the 800 Toho's mm-hmm that cat is using yeah I'm gonna show you guys another little technique if your beads are really really small and you can't use it twisted wire needle so I actually do have a little bit for that as well alright so here is what we have now we have our beautiful disc here and I have my cords coming out on either side of all of those dots my bobbins are wound and I have my little beads there on top all right so this is sort of the starting position of kumihimo now I'm gonna kind of place it in my hand here so you can kind of come over the top here a little bit and just see how this is gonna work now the idea with kumihimo is what you're doing is you're making a braided cord so I'm gonna take this cord here and kind of pop it out and I'm gonna lay it over the top and place it into the next notch there and then I'm gonna take this top one here and bring it down so that it's right next to it there now from this position you can turn it counterclockwise or you can turn it clockwise whichever one you choose it will just depend on the spiral that you want and you just need to continue in the same manner going around so I'm gonna show you again so you take the bottom one and bring it up to the top there and then you take this one and bring it down and then you just take your disc and rotate 90 degrees so this is the whole technique of kumihimo so I'm gonna start to just go a little bit faster so you guys can just see a little bit of how the braid starts to kind of form but once you get really into kumihimo this is such a lovely Zen kind of repetitive motion and then the result is just so gorgeous and so beautiful and you can see right in the center there I still have my gaiter weight and the reason that you're gonna want that weight is to just kind of continue some tension on that braid that you're creating you can see that I'm kind of just adjusting those braids with my hands so I want to make sure that that's gonna be nice and tight and then I think as you're doing some breeding right there we do have a question oh please okay so ferns question is why is the big disc versus a small disc is there a difference and they no cat you recently did some experimenting with this I did there's no real difference I will say that the center hole here is maybe I would say one millimeter smaller than the large disc so if you're worried about your kind of braid fitting down in there that's the only sort of difference but honestly I kind of like using the mini disc just it's a little bit more compact but it's the same if you're gonna be using some larger or thicker cords we do have a different disc that actually is a thicker disc and that's what you're gonna want to use so I'm gonna keep braiding and why don't we show that yep so this is what they call a double density disc and you can see it is basically two discs together but it is one solid piece and this is if you do have a thicker cord it's also um more rigid so if we look at this one here there's a little bit more flex to it so if you are doing something that's a really heavy braid with really heavy beads this can be really nice and that would be the only other thing I would say is with the mini disc because you have less to hold on to it it can be a I find a little bit more comfortable at times to work with yeah absolutely if you are doing something especially that's got a lot of weight coming down through and and in our kits you're gonna get the full size kumihimo disk there and for the flat braid which is these squared discs there's also a mini and a full size as well mm-hmm so good if you're gonna kind of travel and one of the things that I like is I like to have something to do on the airplane and of course you can't bring scissors or anything on the airplane but you'll notice that there's no sharp objects in my braid here so you could actually kind of preload this and put it in a bag and then take it on the plane with you and and weave on the plane and of course once you get to your destination you'll find some scissors but you can actually do the full braiding portion and just leave your strand completed and it's just something kind of nice you know it's again it's just kind of very Zen it's very quiet it's great to do actually and that's a great tip because all your beads are contained once they're in the bobbin I have beaded on the on the plane before I eye some beading on a flight to Hawaii and we hit turbulence everywhere I was doing some bead embroidery and I just had my beading mat and all my little seed beads and now they're on the floor now they're on the floor so actually that's a really great tip because that would not happen if you had Kumi mm your disc might fall on the floor but you would just pick it up with all the beads oh gosh yeah all right so I'm coming to a point where I'm going to show you how to add on your beads here all right so if you want to kind of get in a little close here so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna take one of my little beads here and the same technique I'm just gonna pop out that strand and I'm gonna let it come all the way down there now what you don't want to do is take it so that it falls over what you want to do is try to kind of get it underneath there so it catches that chord just like so because that will allow that bead to sit on the outer side of your braid so and then just again just take one bead make sure it kind of sits nice and down in there underneath that cord and bring the cord across so it's again just the same technique all you're doing is just adding that little bead right underneath that cord and you can see that it kind of continues to just catch itself and hold itself there now if you've gotten to a point where you're worried about a bead getting caught or not coming through you can usually just take a little tweezer or a little sort of plier and just kind of nudge them down and make sure that they're flat and we do have another question okay that's a great question which beans do you recommend to use with kumihimo so basically your only limitation is going to be what will actually fit on your cord so if you're using a thinner cord like we have over here some Griffin silk which is a little bit thinner you can use a smaller bead but if you're say using I know we use s lon a lot mm-hmm so I would say a 10 oh my yuki delica will fit on here that's I think what we have right here in our kit in our kit you can do by combs these are Stross we've got swarovski bicones you can do Yukie of the so 10 oh my iki sorry the Totoro a toes you can do tempos sixes you could do maca Tamas you can also do the Miyuki rounds and 11 and that's where I'm going to show you that little technique of making your own little needle because that will allow you to use those if you're just starting out though if you're if you're brand new to kumihimo I recommend trying with s lon and the Toho 8 OC beads that's what I'm using here it's easy to see it's easy to kind of put it together for yourself that's what we use in our sort of basic kumihimo kits so that's a great place to start and then it Julie's right it's just about experimenting from there yeah and I I noticed that for me it's fun to do a little sample swatches if you're not sure that's gonna work or what's going to look right and so actually that's what I did when I was prepping all these kits I may have some little sample swatches because I wanted to use these 4 millimeter check fire polish beads and I wasn't sure if they were gonna work and they did but I made sample swatches so that's another thing you can do sometimes I'll do a whole long braid actually so I might do like if you look at this I might do something else like this long with all different beads just to see which beads will work and which beads will kind of catch under you have red bridges and your warps so but yeah there's so much you can do yeah alright so I'm just going to kind of turn my work over here just to show you so you can see now this is the braiding that will happen here it's really teensy tiny there but this is how it starts to look when I start to add those beads on there now just as a quick example of what your cord could look like now this is using a different type of cord this is a satin rattail and this is a 1 millimeter but you can just really in this one because it doesn't have any beads on it you can really see how that braid develops and just how beautiful that is even just by using multicolored cord so that is sort of the round version let's go ahead and I'm gonna kick it off to Julie so she can start showing you guys some of the flat kumihimo but do we have another question we do for you before he asks how do you know when to add when you start oh sure um yeah so Dorothy's asking when do you know to start adding beads and what I'm gonna show you is in just a moment here actually the the finishing technique for this what I like to do just for safety is to bead about an inch without beads because what you're gonna do when you finish it is you're going to be cutting that end and sort of that's gonna be the portion that's gonna fit into your clasp to get that nice little sort of seamless line all the way around so I am the safety side I would do about an inch without beads yeah and that's if you want a fully beaded bracelet yes you could also do however long you want you could do to three inches without beads then add beads for an inch or two have a Sokol if you want to grab the flat white kumihimo there you go so this is an example where Julie wanted to do a focal of beads so she did who does that maybe about two inches yet without two inches with that yeah anyone do that same technique with a rounded bead and you know with the vocals as well it could just be a braid and then you could add some beads so just as that kind of option and we do have another question Esther oh I'm so glad you asked all right so come on back here and the thing is is when you're working if you're kind of putting your beads down here and let's say I want to put my work down but when I come back I'm not going to know where to where to start again so do one final rotation and one final dip down with your bead there and then leave three up and one down and I can put that down and I know that when I come back my first step is going to be to put this one down here and to keep going so that is a great way so if you got a you know get off the plane you can put this in your bag and then when you pick it up again you'll know exactly where to start and that can happen anywhere on the disc for you with any of the cords so just three up and one down and you can put your work down so that's a great thing you know if you're doing a necklace or something more involved it could take a little while or you know gotta go get a drink of water or something absolutely and I'll show you here how to kind of mark your place on a flat braid yeah and that is a little bit different um and then we do have another question sure okay so cats question was can you add more beads as you're braiding if you didn't add it enough to begin with absolutely so your only thing that you really have to like kind of how to % be firm on before you start is the length of your cord so always cut extra I know both cat and I always add a lot of extra cord because if you're doing something like s on you get quite a bit you did a spool yeah always kind of add a little bit more but you can definitely add more beads later and that's gonna show you what ya did so you don't add more you just pop open your bobbin here I had mine closed and you just pop it open and you take your cord off just like so and you add on your beads just continue adding I would always make sure that you're adding the same number of beads to each cord so I just added three so I'm gonna go all the way around and add three that way you kind of keep your place a little bit so and then just the same as the starting so you just again just wind up your bobbins yeah so that's a great great tip if you're not quite sure if you're just kind of experimenting on how many beads on each strand I also definitely make sure to write down how many you've added at one point because it's really difficult to count the spiral and how many beads were on each cord so keep a little notepad near you say okay I added 20 beads to each cord and that way you'll kind of be able to gauge and that way you'll know for next time of like oh I just need to add 50 beads on to the cord to make my six-inch bracelet or whatever those beads in that measurement is for you and we don't have a question Brittney how do you know how much cord to cut great question so it does vary a little bit depending on what you're doing in terms of if you are doing a braid like capped it here that has no beads or if you're doing one that has beads or maybe you have really big chunky beads and there's gonna be a little bit more air between them I think a really good rule of thumb is at least three times your length of your bracelet yeah I was just gonna say I was like that's a good game yeah so let's say you're doing an 8 inch bracelet I would do 24 inches of coordinates for B and then what I do is I bump it even beyond that I do say yep so I usually do like 30 35 inches and I have left over I do but what you'll notice is if you look at cats so you want to have enough cord to do your bracelet but you also need to make sure there's enough cord to go all the way down here and a little bit extra even when you get too close to the end yeah so I think a little bit more is always good so for bracelets I always start with a good 30 inches 35 inches well and a good tip is that we make a lot of projects and kits around here and I know we talk about that a lot but the reason that we do that is so that we take the guesswork out for you guys so if you're inspired by a project you might not want to make it in that color or those beads but look at what we tell you to do like you know because if you're making a wrap bracelet it's a very different length you know if you're making a six and a half inch wrap bracelet or an eight inch wrap bracelet you're actually adding a lot of link so kind of use our measurements as a guide for you so definitely check out our projects and tutorials and the videos we kind of help walk you through that and that way you'll know like okay so if I'm using the Miyuki rounds and I want to make a wrap she made this so I just need to add that or subtract that so that'll kind of be a good little starting point for you guys so yeah all right let's go ahead and we'll continue with Julia and she's gonna show us how to do some flat coming heimo so flat kumihimo is gonna be done on a different type of disc so if you look at this guy here and there is again the small and the large and they're identical with the exception of the coarser size but they are square and they've got numbers on the top and the bottom and then they have letters on the side and then they've got this little rectangular cut out here and so for doing a flat braid we're gonna actually do 10 more which is going to need 10 strands wound into bobbin so I've already gone ahead and I've wound those but I'm going to just do what cat did to begin with well actually she did a little bit reverse I like to wind my bobbins first and then tie my knot but you go so definitely oh it works the same it works the same I think yours and falls a little less on tangling I have to untangle it a bit but I just find it a little bit here start with them already wound and so I'm just gathering their ends and I am gonna be using a different type of cord I'm using this lovely knots one millimeter chord and so I like this for the flat braids I just find it really works up nice and you get to see the texture of the braid so that's my personal favorite for a flat braid and then we do have another question so while Julie is kind of working there I'm gonna answer okay so if he is asking what thread we recommend for different kumihimo again we recommend s lon it's a great one if you want something a little thinner a little bit more delicate we recommend the Griffin silk a size six is really probably the lowest you want to go and that just to make sure that it's gonna be a strong enough braid but we also use chain as Julie had There and then for what she's using right now is she's using the lovely nuts cord so it's kind of a nice is it a nylon cord Julianne it is oh did you do it on our website they will say what it is there you go sorry Julie it feels like a nylon kori I just don't want to guarantee that without actually looking it up but okay yeah I wasn't sure if it was it was silk or not because Griffin silk is obviously silk we also have the red satin rattail as well so there's a lot of different things that you can really use it I've actually even seen people do kumihimo with paracord so really thick cord so that you're gonna want here nice thick discs for it yeah I actually have done it with ribbon - you can do it with really pretty thin ribbon so really whatever will fit into these notches is what you can use and so I'm gonna start to line it up but I do know we have a quick question first okay questions about wire leather yes you can do it absolutely wire is tricky um I know I've attempted it and it got um kind of a little bit work hardened before I got too far in my actual kumihimo braid so I not yet mastered wire I would like to someday but I do know there are a lot of wonderful artists who do wire and it's just beautiful so it is possible and yes you can definitely use leather as well yeah and we actually have a video done by Sarah eller she came in for us and she did a great video showing you how to kumihimo with soft flex so that's beading wire so you can actually do with that and that just looks really really gorgeous yeah as well so lots of lots of options when it comes to the materials yeah absolutely yeah really just seriously whatever will fit within these notches yeah you can do it with alright so I've got my knot in the center of my disc and so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to line these up so I've got six cords up top and we're gonna go from the three notch to the eight notch and I'm sorry I know this is backwards for you guys for how you're viewing it here so we've got three up top and four at the bottom okay and I'm gonna do non beaded if you were doing beaded you would preload your beads just like Kat did okay and then for the bottom we're gonna do 14 15 16 and 17 alright so this is what we've got and then I'm gonna add my little weight and at the end of this video or towards the end I'm going to show you how to make your own kumihimo weight if you don't have one of these ones which is specifically designed for it alright so this is our board so at this point we're just working with the numbers and the you want the six cords up top and you want the four at the bottom and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the five I'm gonna pull it out and I'm gonna string it across over to the lowercase e I'm going to take the six out of its notch pull it over to the capital e now I'm going to take the 15 up to the five the four down to the 15 the 14 up to the four and the three down to the 14 and so we just did the left side now we're going to do the right side and that's a really good way of thinking about it kind of helps to keep it a little bit straighter at least in my mind now we're going to take the 16 to the 6 we're going to take the 7 to the 16 17 to the 7 and the 8 down to the 17 and now we want to return to our starting position so we're going to take the lowercase e up to the 8th and the capital e up to the 3 and now we're back to how we started so I will say when you're first starting with flat couldn't emo it takes a little bit to get used to the the round Kumi is a great way to start I say if you're starting from me he must start with around is a little bit more a little easier to comprehend they're less thinking you can get into that Zen state and it goes really quickly and easily with the flat you have to think about it a little bit more you have to kind of adjust your mind it does go quicker once you do a little bit of it so I'm gonna do a couple more rotations here so you can see it again because it is a little bit more complicated than the round so we're gonna take the 5 and we're gonna pull it over to the lowercase e the 6 so the capital e and now we're gonna work on the left side so we're gonna go 15 - 5 4 - 15 the 14 up to the 4 and the 3 down to the 14 we've done half of it again so now we're going to take the 16 to the 6 the 7 down to the 16 the 17 up to the 7 the 8 down to the 17 and now we're gonna pull that lowercase e up to the 8 and the capital e up to the 3 and if you need to stop your work for any reason this is where I would stop it this is how you will know where you left off because you've got the 6 up top again and the 4 at the bottom now when you buy a kumihimo disagree by one of our kits you are going to get instructions so you can also refer to our videos of course but you know you will be able to refer to something in written form to help you with this which is great because everybody learns different so sometimes watching videos is harder for someone and they need to see the paperwork of okay you know lining everything up and just seeing it so we kind of offer lots of different ways for you guys to learn how to do this technique yeah so I'm just gonna keep reading here for a little bit I pull the question okay you ask questions and then we can keep the camera on my braid maybe so yeah that's a little bit but I won't talk so we can see this actually coming together oh that's a great question so people aren't asking if it's always eight cords or can you do more cords you can absolutely you can do twelve is another popular one in round kumihimo Julie's actually doing ten right now in her flat there's a lot I've seen people do a much larger disc so just to give you guys a little bit of background kumihimo is a Japanese braiding technique so you know we have our nice little foam boards now but it started off and it was this big wooden wheel that had these notches and they would just kind of it would sit on the floor and you would spin it around and I found a little cool facts that I wanted to share with you guys is that in Japan and you know back in the days of the samurai they would actually use the kumihimo braided cords for their armor which I thought was kind of neat so but yeah there's a lot of different variations we're gonna be working on some more videos to make sure that you guys know how to do a twelve warp and I've even seen 16 and 24 warps with even larger things so there's a lot of variations to these but yeah so that's um that's one of the things we just wanted to focus on the eight because it's the most basic so that you guys could really kind of use this as a kumihimo 101 jumping-off point to kind of get started yeah I feel like I've done a sixteen sometime in the last seven years but I don't remember what the project was but I do know I've done more and it's really fun it's fun to kind of see what the different braid looks like at the different patterns all right so I'm going to stop and just show you how this is starting to come together it's pretty cool-looking so you see that it's that braiding and that nodding in there and we're just starting to kind of see what this is going to look like so I'm going to just keep going for a little bit more so that I actually have enough to show you how you would finish an end mm-hmm so I want to be able to show that before this class is over because that's an important component so I'm gonna keep going I'm actually gonna pull this back a little bit cuz yeah I like to braid if you can see this I usually braid like this so that my bobbins have more room to hang so while Julie is continuing her braid I'm actually going to show you how to finish off the round braid so I've already beaded a good portion here and I did this sort of off camera so that you guys would really be able to see so you can see that I have about a good inch of that non braided portion on either side okay you could just make this a nice little focal or you can cover up that and I'm gonna show you a technique to do that now just to give you guys a little bit of a guide what Julie was saying earlier with swatches and trying to determine length just so you guys know I started and this was 15800 Toho seed beads on each cord and this gives me about I'd say two and a quarter inches here so if I know that that's sort of my scale that I'm working with I can create bracelets and then kind of create a formula for my sizing that I want if I'm going to be using the same cord and the same size beads all right so what you're gonna do to kind of take this off of your disc is now you can see that I left mine with three up and one down so go ahead and finish that last little braid there and now I'm just gonna take my you can use snips or scissors and I'm just gonna kind of cut my bobbins off here just going all the way around I'm just cutting them off all right so I can move those guys aside and now I'm gonna kind of take my fingers and pinch them up there and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pull my braid through I'm gonna take those cords and just tie them in a little overhand knot don't worry it doesn't need to be pretty we're gonna be cutting this off later and gather them up and just doing another little knot just to make sure they are nice and secure all right and now of course we can unclip and set that aside so this is now let's pretend this is my big finished bracelet so what I want to do is I'm going to be using this magnetic clasp here and the reason that we like to use these clasps is that you can actually see that it's about the same size around as my cord here with the beads so we wanted to give a nice little sort of sleek finished look all right so any time you're working with a magnetic clasp the thing that we tell you first is to separate that clasp because if you try to glue it together you might have a little glue seepage and you might actually end up gluing your clasp together so always set them aside and far apart from each other all right and for this I'm going to be using e6000 you can also use a super new glue which I have on my table here as well let's see sometimes we sneeze alright so I'm just gonna put a little East 6000 on to my table here and what I'm gonna do is kind of prep this here I have my little toothpick there but to be able to fit this inside there I need to build up this cord so I'm gonna actually take the cord off of one of my bobbins here that I had a little extra on and I'm gonna slip it underneath and I'm just gonna tie a little knot there and I want to get that knot right up close to where those beads are right there alright and now take that small end here sorry I'm right-handed so I got to flip it around for myself and I'm just gonna take this cord and I'm gonna kind of wrap around and what I'm doing here is I'm just building up a little bit of bulk to glue into that well so just kind of wrapping it around and as I'm going I'm gonna kind of just make sure that it's nice and even I'm gonna take a moment to stop there I'm gonna tie a little overhand knot just to make sure the cords are good there we go little knot there and probably a few more reps and I think was good to kind of do just one more not here and then I'm gonna tie it off and I think this is a good quick reminder as you're doing that too if you want to enter our giveaway where we are giving away one full kit with the kumihimo plate and the bobbins and all the supplies and then two refills so you'll be able to make three bracelets and so to enter just leave a comment here in this feed alright so now I'm just gonna take this and I'm gonna snip off the ends here and you might need to depending on how sharp my poor little scissors are here I'm gonna saw through just a little bit alright so now I'm gonna take that East 6000 get it a little bit on my toothpick you can also use a little scrap of wire here I'm going to place it into the well and just kind of wipe it all the way around there just so you get a nice contact of glue happening on the inside of that well there alright and now I'm gonna take that end and making sure to get those little ends down in there as well I'm just gonna fit that in and I like to kind of give it a little gentle twist as I'm finishing that up just to kind of make sure that it is nice and in there so now you can see that we have that nice little sort of sleek style because it's about the same width so that is how you can do one end of this finishing technique there and then Julie's gonna show you another little tip to kind of finish the other end if you don't want to use this sort of magnetic clasp we have a lot of great clasp options and actually we're gonna I'm gonna show you a couple here while Julie is still doing a little bit more braiding and we do have actually another question so let me get to the question first then I'm going to show you some more of our clasp options question is like you knew sure so again I recommend kind of looking at some of our projects so what you can see here is this is the same clasp and let me I'm gonna bring this up here so you guys can see this kind of side-by-side so these are both the same sort of tube style magnetic clasps but you can just see that I chose the thinner one here so that the braids finished nicely now for this one I did not need to build up the ends because let me just kind of flip this over here you can see that that cord because this is I use the same s LAN cord here which is smaller beads so what you're actually seeing is you're seeing a very similar width and what you can always do is you can use a pair of calipers and you can kind of measure the braid that you have here and match it to the clasp but I wanted to kind of build this one up so that it matched the width of the braids there so that's one idea for that another thing is that I actually have another project here where this is again a magnetic clasp but I wanted to do two holes in here so I could get those nice little kind of braided knot and this is kumihimo - this is just a fun little kind of technique for that as well so this is also that sort of magnetic style clasp if you don't want to do a magnetic clasp we have a lot of great options here so let me just kind of direct your attention here so we have these bullet end closures that I just added on to a pardon me a toggle clasp and we actually have those that come completed in these great little packs here so you can actually see that on the package and on our website at beadaholique.com you'll be able to find that this is an 8 millimeter bullet cord so this is just going to be that cord end and it comes complete with the jump rings and the bail there so you can add on a nice little charm and it comes with that clasp and we also do have some that have many more options this one actually has a couple of different sizes so these are great packages if you're not quite sure what you want it to be or what its going to be you can get one of those packages and then you can actually find the right size that sort of fits once you're done with your braids because I know there's nothing more frustrating than getting all the way to the end and then going oh shoot I need a different size class' so but again look at the projects and tutorials that we have to kind of help get you started to figure out what fits in what that's a great tip and I can show you right now how we would do it if you wanted a little bit more of a slender clasp and so also when you are trying to figure out your clasp you're not going to ever put your clasp over the beads no so you're only really concerned with what cord is that you're using so just like Kat said find one of our projects that's going to be using the same stringing material for your warps as what we've used and that will tell you then the size yes so let's say if I could borrow cats against your Apple here so you've got this really nice slender closure here that magnetic clasp and you don't need to build this up at all but at the same time you can't just cut straight through this is going to unravel on you so you have to secure it somehow and you know what we do we use tape we just use a little bit of tape and this actually is probably gonna be too much tape let me try to make it a little bit smaller here and what we do is we just go right up to where the beads are and we just roll that tape over it like that and do it a couple times and then what you can do is you can cut right through that tape and now your cords aren't going to unravel but let's take the tape off of this end so you can see what would happen if we had not put tape on it what's going to start to happen as your cords ends are gonna unravel and then what you could do is you would just fit this inside of that so I would cut this a little bit smaller and it'll just fit inside and you would add glue and you'd make sure that on this case because you have the exposed ends right here you have a lot of glue sitting at that base yep so that is going to grab those cord ends and you would just use again like an e 6000 and you can cut this to any size you want so it will fit in there so that would be how you would finish it if you do have a smaller narrower clasp so those are a couple of different finishing a lot of lot of great options when it comes to finishing with clasps so and then I you know I can show you right now to how you would finish the oh great so okay so here's what we did as Kat was talking this is the flat braid that I made and so you can see that that would pretty quickly was able to do a couple inch I was gonna say that was not take very long so now I'm going to take this off of my board and I just yep let them off do the same of course I think if you're working with a material that's maybe a little bit more expensive or you have less up you'll be a little bit more cautious but for like this lovely knots you get I think it's 50 yards okay so I tend to try to make life a little bit easier on myself I just give myself a lot of room I'm gonna take the Gator weight off okay and then I'm just gonna tie it so all those 10 warps okay so here's my little sample swatch now so that is the flat braid I'm gonna get rid of all of this so let me show you what we're aiming for so I like to finish the flat braid with these little ribbon ends and so these are nice because they come in a variety of finishes and they just go over that braid really nicely so what I tend to do is I take a piece of plastic in this case I'm just going to use a plastic bag a post-it toothpick and some e6000 glue and I gonna lay that right down on my plastic and I'm going to pop the seal on my e6000 put some down okay and then I'm going to take the glue and we're I'm gonna want my clasp to be I just smear the glue glue over and I try to push it into the fibers of the braid and I do the edges and then what I do is to make that glue seep in there even more I pull it I just pull right where that clasp is going to go all right I guess it's not clasp it's a cord and you would take a jump ring mm-hmm magnetic clasp or whatever you want to do if you look again at our sample which went right here you see we finished it with just a couple jump rings in there magnetic clasp but that's really good to get the glue nice and down in there it's kind of sealing the ends which is something that you're definitely going to want to do for the life of the piece absolutely so here we go and I'm going to just pause for a minute while that side dries it's not going to take that long and then if we want to do we have another question a question good timing oh I would love to all right so this is one of those flat kumihimo x' and this is one of those kits there and all I did is I have gotten really into the stacking and layering so I added one of the adjustable bangles here and this is actually another one of our kits that has a nice little Sourav ski Rivoli there and I have my little birdie and my little arrow there so I just kind of added it together to make a nice little stacked piece but this is that flat kumihimo and in those kits you actually get a triple wrap and then a single wrap so today I'm just wearing the triple wrap here on my wrist but I love just it looks so boho and just so fun and I just personally I love the red and the gold together it's just so striking so I wanted to just add a little extra sparkle here with some Swarovski and these are some beautiful and then design charms that I have here so that's what I'm wearing today alright good timing I'm gonna go and continue how to do this so normally I would let this glue a little bit longer but we are going to go for it anyways I don't want to make everyone sit here so I'm going to flip my piece over and I'm gonna apply glue now to the other side and I'm gonna look and take note of where I had my glue line so I can have it in the same spot on both sides and again I'm really just pushing that glue into the fibers into the braid trying to make sure I'm getting the edges and then I am pulling it I don't know why but I find that pulling it really helps I don't know it just kind of makes it seep in there really get in between alright and now this one I do have to let dry for a few minutes before I cut it and add my cord in so I think this is a great time to show you how to make a homemade Camino wait so we're gonna let that dry yeah so in case you don't have a gator wait Julie's gonna show you a couple of different ways you can kind of make your own yeah absolutely so I love these these are great they actually come in a couple sizes we have a little bit of a bigger one so if you're using some thicker cord you're gonna want a little bit more heavyweight but even though you can see on the little one there he does have a little hook on the end so if you need weight you can actually add what Julie's about to do to create more weight if you need it exactly and if you are interested in these these are available at beadaholique.com along with everything else you see here but if you want to make a homemade weight let me show you a couple different options so I'm just gonna take some of that cut cord that I use you can use any cord and the basic principle is we just need something to grab on to the tail end of our kumihimo braid and to weigh it down so it feeds nicely and evenly through the hole in the disk and so I'm just gonna show you two different options sorry as I grab my supplies right here all right so all right option one so here's your binder clip flip it like this so you can easily just squeeze it open take your cord it can be s lon it can be this lovely not cord it can be anything tie a couple knots around it tie that to the little end of the clip okay then you would take this as normal around Escobar oh yeah take my little Gator weight off you here and you can use my program so this is a dapping a tool from my dapping set and you would just then flip it to the braid just like any other cookie my weight so that is one option and you can of course adjust the weight okay another option is I just pulled the coins that I had in my wallet and I'm just gonna fill my little bag that's some beading supplies came in yeah and you can put as many or as few as you like that bag and we're just gonna take another length of cord tie it around the bag so we just made a weight yep and that's all you're really striving for as you're striving for that weight now I will say I do love my kumihimo weight that is pre-made if you do a lot of kumihimo I'm just just investing in this it's not very expensive I like it cuz it's so small so you don't ever have it interfering or in jostling but this definitely works too yep and then again just your binder clip and attach it to the end Oh easy and there we go and now we'll be the exact same principle again we just clip that binder clip to the tail end and now we have a wait yep and this actually does provide good tension you know so and that's all you're really working for is just to get that nice tension happening there that helps to keep your brain even mm-hmm and let's see if I'm ready to finish this or at least if it's dry enough so I can show you the finishing while you're checking now we do have a couple of questions here it is so the green cord is the lovely knots one millimeter now in oh so let me show you that the size difference so here's the one millimeter and it does come in a two millimeter as well and so there's the size difference is quite a difference you can definitely braid with a two millimeter it's gonna be harder to find a bead to put on that though yeah that's the only little note about that but this works great and then I do want to show you the satin rattail the one and two difference as well so here is a one millimeter satin rattail which is what Kat used and here is a two so there's a little quick size comparison for you and actually while you're while you're down there I just wanted to kind of point out so I made this bracelet here with the one millimeter satin rattail so this is what I what I've got right here this is the braid that comes out but what's nice is on the back of the packaging if they actually kind of give you a little pattern to do it for you so you can get that nice color gradation with each of the four different colors of cord that's in here so they make it really nice and easy for you so if you're again looking to find a jumping-off point for your kumihimo that's a great place to start because then you get to see the braid develop and the pattern as well we have another question oh the question is can you make a bangle bracelet without a closure with kumihimo um you know I have been trying to experiment and I'm gonna keep experimenting about a way to get kumihimo and wire happening if I can thread a wire down the center or possibly memory wire Simon and a toy without a little bit it's gonna be a little bit more of an advanced technique but if I can get it down to a good video I would definitely do that for you but yeah so if you guys have any video suggestions for us something that you want to see or that you're curious about and we don't have a video let us know we have thousands of videos but we do still have some gaps there so if you guys are looking for something and you're not finding it let us know we'd love to make a video for you because you guys are our viewers and we want to make sure that you guys can make pretty things and we love a challenge we do I you know and it really gets us thinking about it like oh I wonder if I couldn't and you know so that's a great thing to do alright so let's go ahead and finish off with the flat kumihimo here okay so we're gonna and I'm going to show you how to add this little end to the flat Kumi so we've got that glue line and you see us on both sides it's a little shiny right there so what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut right through it I really hope this is dry enough okay so that that's pretty good okay we're okay so now what I would do is why am i post it again and put a little bit more glue on it okay and we're gonna add some glue to the inside of this now you notice that there is this little loop right here and there's a little hole so just be careful that you don't put too much glue right up against that hole it will seep through but you do need enough glue to grab onto your cord then we're gonna put our cord or our braid I should say at this point right into this little end and now we're just going to pinch it shut now if you look at my pliers these are my favorite players and I have coated them with tool magic which is just a nice little coating that you can put on it we do have it at beadaholique.com and it dries almost like a rubber coating and then it will prevent your pliers from scratching metal which is great for using with these ribbons here and now we're just going to gently squeeze it shut and you see I'm not marring that metal which is actually really nice I love this tool magic I've recently rediscovered it I think we showed it in our class our last class Raoul's and there we go and so now that's how you finish it and then here again is how you would actually make this into a bracelet is you would add jump rings and a little magnetic clasp but Lobster whatever you like alright so I just have just a couple of quick things to kind of show you guys here we're gonna start to wrap it up so if you are just joining us you still have a chance to win our giveaway here so what we're gonna give you in our lovely giveaway in just a little while here is we're gonna give you a full kumihimo kit and two refills now the great thing is is that we do sell the refills so if you already have your kumihimo disk and your bobbins and your glue go ahead and pick up some refills and these are gonna be just really great so you can continue to do in different styles and test out some different beads and have a lot of fun with them so we are giving this away to one lucky winner in just a little bit but what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna show you a couple of little quick tips for if you're trying to design patterns or you know I did show you that I was gonna I did tell you that I was gonna show you how to make a needle with just a little bit of glue alright and I think just before you start the shirt so we do have another question oh great question ah I'm getting to it alright let me start there then so Julie did a great video showing you how to add a large hole bead to kumihimo now what i've done here is i've actually used the toe hose and then the magatamas here and if--and them out in a nice little spiral pattern but you can see that this little butterfly in that sits in the center here is a large hole bead now the great thing is is okay let me see if I can try to mimic what's gonna happen here is you can take all the cords off and slide it down so you'd have to take off all your bobbins so you'd get to a certain point like for example I only added the beads for this portion and this portion I didn't add all my beads because I knew that I needed to get those cords through the center there so you can take all of your cords off slide the bead on and then continue your braiding alternatively if you wanted to you could take off one cord and then slide it through and place it back down and then take off the next cord slide it through and place it back down and that's a good recommendation if you're trying to continue a specific pattern that's what I had to do with this one because I knew that I'd be spiraling those beads so I wanted to make sure that my beads were going back down into their official pattern so I'm going to be doing a video showing you a couple of alternate techniques to kind of get that effect because it does matter if you're adding one bead or if you're gonna add two so you just kind of need to work in sections but that kind of goes back to one of the questions we had earlier is you know how do you add more beads well if you get to a point with this you're only adding half of your beads at the start so that's that's one way to do it the other thing that you can do is as you're braiding we always talk about beads here but you can actually string on a closed jump ring and that will kind of give you a nice little anchor point for you to add a charm with an open jump ring to kind of sit near your clasp or in the center of your bracelet as well so we do have in our findings kits here and you can kind of see here I had this lovely little bail so this kind of slides around on my little braid there you can make a thicker braid so it doesn't slide but this is sort of that same little technique there of kind of getting it through and then this is a great way to add a little charm to your kumihimo bracelet all right so now I'm going to show you how you can make a little needle and what I'm going to be using now is I'm not gonna be using the e6000 and specifically for this you want to use this super new glue so what we're gonna do here is we're just gonna take a scrap of our cord and this would be the cord that you're using this works with the S lon and I'm just gonna open this up here now this is a really kind of wet glue so what you're gonna do is you're just gonna kind of beat up just a little bit on the end there and then all I'm gonna do is kind of slide it over the last inch or so and you can just see I'm just now using a little bit of this side of the bottle there just to kind of get it wet with the glue and then you're just going to want to set this aside to dry and what's gonna happen is it's gonna turn out like this so I did this one earlier so you want to let it dry for I'd say a good 20 minutes to a half an hour but now you can see that I have a stiff end there so now I can kind of pick up those beads you can actually see that it's sort of flicking in my and as opposed to this one that will just collapse on the other side so you're getting that nice little kind of needle that you can scoop up your beads so really simple because if you're using that twisted wire needle you have to still get two cords through there so with this one it's just that single cord so it gives you a really great little option if you're using s lon and the 11 IOC beads Sam all right let's see it did we cover Oh great mission how wide can you make a flat Kumi bracelet I don't know I have not tried it is homeward now I have um you know I think you could probably make it quite wide you have so many different numbers where's I think the only thing is you can make it as wide as your yeah there but yeah is this hole so this hole is about an inch and a half mmm and so what I'm gonna presume you would do because this is a technique where you saw that we lined up the six cords up top the four at the bottom and then we just did one over to the E and then we just worked left to right my best guess is you're just gonna start with more cords up top and more at the bottom so maybe eight and six or a C one two three four five six seven eight nine ten you have ten notches so probably like ten and eight I don't know I'm gonna experiment though now I really want to try it I was gonna say you know you could probably get fairly thick if you started to use leather cord yeah like a like a two millimeter leather cord just because it's gonna be a little bit stiffer so it's gonna probably be a little bit more of an open weave right as opposed to what Julie was doing which was really nice and tight and braided so yeah be good to experiment with and I'm excited I am I I dunno I've done like a twelve and a season teen warp on the round but I haven't ventured beyond a ten on the flat so I think that's a great great question and I will experiment I'll let you know what if I know yeah so last little tip before we officially do our giveaway here is if you are doing a pattern and you want to kind of you need to number your bobbins one of the things that I like to use is new painters tape because it won't add any stickiness to your bobbins alternatively what you could do is you could have your set of bobbins and you could sort of sharpie on the back here so you could number them one through eight and that's a great way to sort of keep in mind so that if you do figure out that you lose your place again I'm always writing down okay on cord one I did this I'm cord to I did this and you know especially if you're doing a spiral pattern that's really helpful to know like when you're gonna take it off and put it back on so that you know that if it goes around and eight you got to get back to that point before you take anything off so again just another little tip and you know you so have your scotch tape your painters tape your toothpicks yeah your bag of pennies on your supply all of our little kumihimo hacks and stuff because we've done a lot of it here and you know it's just really such a fun technique I definitely encourage you to try it out and and test it out and let us know what you guys find if you if you do something be sure to tag us on Instagram we love to share that stuff and we love to see what you guys are working on so it's a great way for us to kind of get a little customer gallery going and and share what you guys are working on yep and we do have another question wonderfully and chingling here so Ashley Kat design wearing each other's designs we are gonna take this off so this is a kit and it comes as a full kit which includes the loom because these are done on the loom and this is a pair of loom the statement earrings you can see it has a really beautiful Swarovski crystal and cat did this where she did a whole bunch of different patterns and I'm wearing the black and white version I don't remember the exact name of this particular one that is the Helsinki Helsinki okay so I like to go international but they're beautiful earrings they're very comfortable to wear I've been wearing them for this whole class and then I really haven't except for when they jingle and I kind of feel them move I haven't noticed that I have them on so but they're beautiful statement earrings and cat just did such an amazing job with all the patterns and all the colors and there are none design findings which are just so beautiful so they were really fun to make I really I really enjoyed that yeah I like being looming too for the tiny beads yeah it's such a fun technique and I like these too because you can just get the refills if you already have your loom but if you're new to it and want to make these and you don't have the tools you can also buy the full kit with the tools yeah I'm really excited that we that we can offer you guys refills because it allows you to buy one full and then buy the other refills so that you don't have to keep having because otherwise I would have a stack of kumis I think your mom would too um yes you would my mom all right so I think we're ready to do our giveaway so let's find out who our lucky winner is yeah and our lucky winner is fern M so congratulations fern yes and all you need to do is just email our service at beadaholique and we will get your information to send this lovely gift out to you so congratulations to fern who won today but if you did not win today be sure to head over to beadaholique.com we have all of our kits are brand new kits that are launching today so those come in full kits and refills for you guys and keep posting questions yeah to this post you know even though we aren't gonna be live we're still gonna be checking back and you know give us or give us some video suggestions if you have them if you have questions you know following up from this please go ahead and leave them there we are going to be answering them so yeah so thank you so much you guys and email customer service for the winner for fern so fern go ahead and email customer service all right thank you so much you guys have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you back here we do these classes the first Friday of every month at 10 a.m. Pacific time so we'll be back in March for something new and exciting alright have a wonderful weekend everyone bye