How to Make a Mala

	Gemstone Guru Beads, Rose Quartz, Round 10mm, Pink (1 Set) SKU: SPQR-201 $3.69
	Gemstone Beads, Lapis Lazuli, Round 10mm, Blue and Gold (7.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPLL-100 $7.89
	Gemstone Beads, Rose Quartz, Round 10mm, Pink (7.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPQR-105 $3.79
	Gemstone Beads, Amethyst, Round 10mm, Purple (15.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPAM-100 $9.49
	Eurotool Super New Glue - Heavy Duty Adhesive - 3 Gram Bottle SKU: XTL-1059 $7.45
	The Beadsmith Bent Fine Point Tweezers For Bead And Pearl Knotting SKU: XTL-4001 $4.99
	The Beadsmith Beading Needles Medium Flexible Twisted (50 pcs) SKU: XTL-3250 $7.99
	Gemstone Beads, Lapis Lazuli, Round 10mm, Blue and Gold (7.5 Inch Strand) SKU: SPLL-100 $7.89
	Super-Lon, S-Lon, Cord - Size 18 Twisted Nylon - Capri Blue / 77 Yard Spool SKU: XCR-4238 $5.25
	Aromatic Cedar Wood Beads, Buddha Head 19mm, Natural (1 Piece) SKU: BWD-1014 $2.09
	Gemstone Guru Beads, Howlite, Barrel 18mm, White and Black (1 Set) SKU: SPHO-50 $4.99
	Eurotool Super New Glue - Heavy Duty Adhesive - 3 Gram Bottle SKU: XTL-1059 $7.45

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Kat with beadaholique.com stone beads and wood beads now you can see that there are many different gemstones that you can use and I'm not going to go into all of their meanings here but that is part of a mala so you can definitely check that out on the website as well so I just want to show you how to kind of construct it and the main thing about these is that they feature what is called a guru bead so I'm going to show you my one here and this rose quartz guru bead is my bead there and you can see that the guru bead itself has a little cross-section because it needs to accommodate a row of strands going across this way and then a row going down so inside that little bead it looks like a little tee and now this is the tower bead and that kind of attaches to that and you'll see that in just a minute but I wanted to add a little bit of extra flourish so I added a Buddha and another wood bead and a little nice little tassel so I'm going to be making a very similar style to this now this is going to be your Tibetan style and that features three of your marker beads here which are my wood beads here so it just depends on the amount of beads now a mala is always going to be 108 actual prayer beads that are which are what these are and then you're going to have your marker beads as well so it's completely personalized you also don't have to follow any of the spiritual practices to make these really beautiful pieces as well and over here I do have a this is a Zen style so it features seven down here and then 14 and then 66 now I just want to show this to you because we do have some really beautiful 10 millimeter gemstones but just so you can kind of see how large this is I'm just going to pick it up for a second so you can see that most often people carry them in their hands or they'll wrap them around their wrist several times to get that sort of look but depending on how many gemstones you use and the size I'm sorry pending on the size of gemstones you use you'll be able to adjust your size of your mala but it will always contain 108 beads plus your marker beads you can also just make almalik with just 180 s going all the way around and this is a different style of that guru bead and because this is 10 millimeters here I am using a beading wire as opposed to a s LAN core which I'm going to be using for my mullahs today and one last thing before we kind of dive into actually making our mala I have over here a couple of meditation bracelets and I did do a separate video on these just showing you how to make those but it is a very similar technique and this is using that same guru bead as well so you can get a little bit more of a clear picture on how that sort of tea works inside so I'm going to clear a little bit of my space here before I get started so floral mala today I'm going to be using these beautiful orange aventurine and these lapis lazuli marker beads now I'm going to be doing the Zen style so I'm going to need four marker beads I have my little tassel here and I'm going to be using a wood guru bead now I did bring out a different guru bead that wasn't attention anything just because I kind of want to show you how it looks so you're going to have a large hole on the bottom and then two smaller holes on the side there creating that tea and then you'll have your tower bead that you attach it to so I just wanted to bring that out just to show you one more time how that guru bead works and I'm going to be using s lon today and I have already cut 10 feet of my F 1 cord and this is a size 18 so it's a little coil so I'm just going to stretch it out just a little bit as far as tools that you're going to need I'm going to be using some twisted wire needles and you may or may not need these sometimes your s lon will slip through your beads just fine without them but it's always a good little tool to just have on hand and one of the things that you're going to need to do is I have a little scrap of my F on that I'm going to be using and I added that twisted wire needle to the end and because of the nature of bringing the ends together and overlapping them you're going to need to choose three beads here and let's see if these guys are going to be my candidates now gemstones the reason you do this is the gemstones always have slightly different size holes so you don't want to get to the end and end up with a gemstone that you can't get four strands through so I'm going to slip my two strands through just like that and I'm just testing the whole science so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my needle back through the center there and make sure that I can get at least four strands through there fairly easily and that was a little tighter than I wanted but they do fit I'm going to go ahead and slide that off and I'm just going to repeat that with my other two beads and I'm going to set these ones aside so that I use them at the very end and I'll show you why when we get there but this is an important step just so that you can make sure that you're not going to run into problems when you go to finish off your mala and I'm just going to use my tweezers there to pull through come that one works too alright and last one I'll try to get there really quick it's also a good idea if you want to do these with your marker beads but I'm using 10 millimeter beads so I know that those holes are going to be a little bit larger so I should be all set for that all right this one might be a little tight actually let's see now this one is actually the easiest alright so I can fit those four strands through there alright so I'm going to set those three B's aside and make sure and I'll show you when to use them at the ends there all right so now I'm going to take my scrap and kind of set that off to the side as well alright taking your ten feet of cord here put your cord ends together and you're going to find the center there we go alright so here is my center point and moving back to one end what I'm going to need to do first is slide it underneath my and you know what I'm going to need those needles after all right away alright so I'm going to take my twisted wire needle slide it on to my SL on there here we go and now what I was trying to do is find and underneath that jump ring there because I want to catch that and now this tassel is going to sit in the very center so move it all the way down to that center there alright just like so so now it's right perfectly in the center so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take it and just do an overhand knot and pull it through and I'm going to take my tweezers and just sort of place them inside that knot there making sure to catch both of those strands and just sort of pinch it with my tweezers and let me do this and then I'll kind of show you okay there we go so I was able to pinch the two cords in between that knot and the purpose of this is to pull that knot so that it sits nice and snug up against that jump ring so now you can see I can just pull my little tweezers out and push it down so you have a nice little knot that sits right on top there so now we need to take both of these cord ends here and get them up through our tower bead for our guru bead and I'm already a little tangled here that's alright there we go okay I'm just going to put my ends together here and put them up through that tower bead all right and that will come and sit down right on top of that knot and you'll notice that it kind of gets and develops into that guru bead so this is what we should be looking at so far so now I have my two equal strands coming out the top so we can go ahead and separate those because we're going to need to get them through our guru bead taking one end flipping it on to the twisted wire needle and here's probably the trickiest part about this whole process is getting it up through now you can just see I just took my kind of my finger there and just gave it a nice little curve because we're going to need to go in through the bottom and out through the side of the scoober bead so making sure that I do have the bottom there there we go and through the bottom and out through the side now this could take a couple of minutes so I might do this I'm going to I'm hoping I can do this quickly for you here but if not we'll we'll show you what it looks like there we go all right so you can see I just kind of got my needle in there and just to curve around so that is one side there and you just pull your whole strands all the way through without getting them knotted and tangled terribly okay here we go all right so that is one side and it kind of got twisted there so I'm going to do at the other side hopefully quickly here and then we'll be ready to start our knotting okay so I finally got it in there so I'm just pulling my guru bead together so now you can see it then I have my tassel my tower bead and my guru bead and now we are all set and ready to begin adding our gemstones so you're going to be working with one side at a time so what I recommend is kind of just setting one side off off to the side and I'm going to move back to my twisted wire needle and just kind of move it down a little bit because you're going to have a lot of cord to be working with so the first thing is and this is a choice that you can make you can start with a nut which I'm going to do or you can start with your first gemstone it is entirely up to you so go ahead and this is the exact same technique of pearl knotting so if you've done this before you'll start to understand so just loop around your fingers pull it all the way through and then you'll take your tweezers and again kind of slip them into where the knot is so I'm grabbing where I want my not to be through my knot there and then I'm just pulling it tight and then releasing my tweezers and giving it a nice little tug on the way down so I'm going to start with that knot right there so next I'm going to take one of my gemstone beads here flip it on so that's all the way down just like so and again wrap it around my two fingers pull it through the back and that's just how I tend to do my nodding you can do it however you like it's all the same result take my tweezers place them on to my little knob pan or on to where I want my not to be pull tight and squeeze down so that's the whole process really once you've gotten your mala started oops I left my needle there there we go so what I'm going to continue to do is I'm like I said I'm going to be doing a Zen style so I'm going to be doing seven beads and then I'm going to come back to just show you the difference with the marker bead and then we're going to continue going all the way around okay so I've added seven beads just by doing at my knotting so you can see how really beautiful that blue cord is looking in those orange beads there now you have a couple of options before you add your marker bead now you can see in this one here then I did add a little gold embellishment and that was because on these wood beads those holes are a little larger than I wanted them to be so instead of double knotting it which is another option you'll have you can add a little embellishment on either side now in this one here this is actually strong so these are crimp covers and crimp beads to kind of secure that cord as you work and I'll have a tutorial on that as well but because of my lapis beads here they're actually going to fit pretty nicely but I am going to show you sort of how to do that double knot so if you've gotten to your seventh bead and you want to add a double knot to it you'll simply just do another knot when you go in with your tweezers I have a little tip for you here to get it to sit where you want it to sit you'll actually be pinching underneath the last little not that you strung so that will kind of come and sit and that way you'll kind of create a large knot that way so you won't really see it that much when you add your marker bead on so I'll show how to show you really quick here all right so you see it just a little bit more but that way you keep that nice little knotted section in between so I'm just going to do the same here I'm going to do a single knot and then I'm going to do a double knot and then we are just going to continue on with our regular nine alright so there's my single knot and you get the hang of this and it becomes very very fast and just nice and easy pulling that all the way through and again bring my tweezers in and I want to pinch a little bit below the knot if not right on the knot and just sort of push that down with my tweezers there all right so now I'm going to continue my knotting and what I'm going to do because again I'm making a Zen style for this particular one I'm going to do 14 bees add another one of my marker beads and then I'm going to do about they're supposed to be 66 in between so that's sort of the halfway point so you'll do seven a marker bead fourteen a marker bead and then you'll do maybe about 20 and then I'll come back and show you how to sort of connect it but before you do that do that on both sides so I will meet you back here in just a moment alright so I've gotten to this point in my mala and I just want to take a second to show you how beautiful that blue cord is coming through with those orange beads and lapis beads so you can really see how much that color cord that you two will affect the look of your mala so just to review I have my guru be with my little tassel down here and I have seven bees on each side I have my marker bead and then I did fourteen beads another marker bead and now I'm coming to the main portion here so what you can see is I have 33 beads here but my last two so bead number 31 and fit my 32 and 33 so is 33 beads here don't have none and then on the other side here I have not it and I have my last feed there without a knot so this is the ending point that you want to get to so again you're going to need 66 beads in this ending portion for this type of mala now you can do this at any portion if you wanted to tie it up over here but you just need to make sure that there are 66 so I have one bead and then two beads without knot so what I'm going to do now and this is why we test our gemstones in the beginning to make sure that we can go through that extra time is I'm going to take this cord here with the single bead on it and I'm going to go through that first bead on the other side and just going through it in the opposite direction so you can see that it's tough to pull through because we wanted to make sure to test that all right so now I'm just going to pull those two ends together and the reason why I didn't want those knots there before is because I'm going to do those knots there now so just go ahead and pull it so it's snug and then what you're going to do is you're going to do a little mat with one of the cords here and just going to wrap it through creating a loop and then pull it through now before you pull it all the way down just make sure that you give a little extra tug to the other side because you don't want this part to be loose so before you kind of bring those knots together just make sure that it's going to be nice and snug on the other side now this can take a little bit of finagling there we go and pull that cord through and pull my nut tight there we go and I'm actually going to do a second knot now doing the same thing right where my other knot was just for a little added security there we go so it doesn't look that much bigger than the other knots there but I just it's worth it to get that security so now I'm going to do it on the other side here to create that second knot and again this is very little come in handy and pull that together here we go you can use your tweezers to get it a little closer if you want to I am going to just tie my second knot here just like so now another option here is you can just trim these cords and be done with it but I like to and this is why I like to test out three beads is I like to try to get my needle to go through the adjacent bead on either side here so you kind of just got to pull your knot away and get your needle through there I'm going to use my tweezers to help me out there we go alright and you can tie another knot there but I think I'm I'm good and then I'm just going to repeat that on this other side here and this is a very similar technique to like I was saying earlier pearl knotting so if you're familiar with that this is going to be very similar so and now just pull through there we go alright so you can see I have my two main knots they're my two extra double knot I should say and now all I'm going to do is come in with my flush cutters so I can get nice and tight and just trim that off and trim off my other side here there we go and now I'm going to add a little tiny dab of glue now for this one I'm going to use the super new glue you can also use e6000 or I also recommend using RGS high post med because it comes with a nice little sort of needle applicator then I'm going to use the super new glue because it dries really fast and it also creates a really nice hard knot so I'm going to take one of my twisted wire needles here and just onto the tip there add a teeny tiny drop of the super new glue there we go and just sort of take it and paint my little knot there actually I think I can do it we're going to try just getting just a little bit there we go that's all you need just like I said a very teeny tiny bit which is why I recommend using the needle or just being very careful with your super new glue all right so there you go it's a little dark right now because it's just a little wet so let it dry on a piece of paper making sure that it's not on your surface there but once it drives you will have your completed mala and just to sort of show you we have some different styles here and I showed this to you in the beginning but just to kind of reiterate one more time this is a different type of mala here and it's just a fun way to do this this is an incredibly personal thing it's feel free to personalize it with wood beads gemstones you can also use glass beads as well there is no right or wrong way to do this and it is a beautiful piece to help you with any type of meditation practice that you might do so thank you so much for watching and please subscribe to our video by hitting the subscribe button below and you will find all of these tutorials and even more videos at beadaholique.com you