How to Make a Round Kumihimo Braid Using Wire

	Wire Elements, Tarnish Resistant Rose Gold Wire, 24 Gauge 30 Yards (27.4 Meters) SKU: WNT-2437 $9.99
	Capsule Bead Caps, with Flaps 7x6mm, Silver Plated (25 Pieces) SKU: BMB-6151 $3.89
	Earring Findings, Bali Style Earring Hooks with Ball 21mm, Silver Plated (25 Pairs) SKU: FEA-4025 $12.99
	Artistic Wire, Silver Plated Craft Wire 22 Gauge Thick, Tarnish Resistant Silver (8 Yard Spool) SKU: WCR-2230 $8.75
	Artistic Wire, Copper Craft Wire 22 Gauge Thick, Bare Copper (8 Yard Spool) SKU: WCR-2234 $4.99
	Wire Elements, Tarnish Resistant Gold Color Copper Wire, 22 Gauge 20 Yards (18.2 Meters) SKU: WNT-2233 $9.99
	Silver Plated Large Slider Bail Front Ring (10 pcs) SKU: FCO-4058 $5.29
	Lobster Clasps, Curved 10mm, Silver Plated (10 Pieces) SKU: FCL-2507 $5.89
	TierraCast Fine Silver Plated Pewter Koi Japanese Fish Charm 17mm (1 pcs) SKU: PND-5344 $1.99
	Nunn Design Antiqued Silver Plated Flat Cable Chain, 3.6mm, by The Foot SKU: CHA-9809 $5.59
	Wire Elements, Tarnish Resistant Rose Gold Wire, 26 Gauge 34 Yards (31 Meters) SKU: WNT-2637 $9.99
	The Beadsmith Lightweight Kumihimo Round Disc Disk For Japanese Braiding and Cording 35mm Hole SKU: XTL-6095 $5.99
	Kumihimo Thread Bobbin, Flexible Plastic 2 1/2 Inch (8 Pieces) SKU: XTL-6108 $5.45
	Gator Weight For Kumihimo Braiding - 1.6 Ounces (1 pcs) SKU: XTL-6063 $12.99
	Micro Grip Pliers, Long Chain Nose, 5 Inches Long (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-101 $15.75
	Micro Grip Pliers, Round Nose, 5 Inches Long (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-104 $16.59

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
hi this is Alexandra at beadaholique you how to make a round kumihimo braid using wire so here i've got a finished project a necklace that uses this technique for the focal and it's 22 gauge wire in this case in four different tones and you can see what a nice organic sort of casual braid that creates often times you will see why are used with a kumihimo technique in the flat shape I didn't see too many examples of that in the round and so I was curious to try it so in this video we'll be making a pair of earrings such as this and for that we'll be using 24 gauge wire in the hematite and the Rose I've got an earring hook and a 5 millimeter capsule bead cap so this is the this is what the spool looks like of the 24 gauge in the hematite in roots and also I wanted to show you that I did experiment with 1/3 gauge of wire and this is with a 26 gauge and so what's kind of interesting is you'll see that the contrast plays kind of differently depending on what gauge of wire you use and obviously if you use 4 colors it comes out differently than if you use 2 you can be more subtle or more bold depending on what design you're looking for so for this it's gonna be an eight warp design and if you're not familiar with that please do visit our video on how to create a simple eight warp kumihimo braid and so I've got my disc here kumihimo disk if you like you're welcome to use the bobbins as you would for any other textile I'm not gonna do that in this video I find the wire plays better when it's not wound up so I've got my kumihimo weight I also have some side cutters I've got round nose pliers and chain nose pliers I'll probably be using an awl depending on how things go just in case and also maybe some nylon jaw pliers to flatten my wire or probably not but I wanted to show you that you can use those if you want so let's get started what I'm gonna do is start by cutting my wire and I'll bring in my ruler for that and I'll be cutting four lengths of each color wire it's gonna be at least 18 inches I'm gonna be safe and go with 20 you can even do 24 and the great thing about the craft wire is its economical so this is a great way to learn and it's also fairly malleable so it's easy to work with and then once you get the hang of it you can upgrade to gold fill or sterling so I'm gonna measure this out here I've got 15 20 inches right there and I'm just gonna pull these kind of up against this spool to measure out the rest of my lengths the wire can be a little unwieldy at first it's definitely a different feeling than wrapping with s long cord or rat tail even softflex wire it's definitely a different different animal so I've got my fourth length hematite coming off in the 24 gauge and 20 inches of for different lengths so I'm going to do this very same thing with the rose gold wire and while I do that I'm actually going to take my Gator weight and just clip on to the end of these wires to keep them secure while I cut the rest of these and then I'll meet back with you when we're ready to load the wires onto the disc all right so I have cut all my wires now I've got eight of them and I'm going to combine them at the end bringing all the lengths together and I'm gonna want to kind of twist and wind them just to get them caught in a little Bunch and just for good measure I'm gonna bring in my round nose pliers and nothing fancy I'm just gonna loop the wires around themselves just get a good catch with the tail heading in the opposite direction of where I'll be working so once I've got that set I'm gonna grip the whole thing with my Gator weight like so and send the weight through the center of the disc this is all very similar to the process of eight warped kumihimo as per usual so now the order of wire that I've chosen to place is as follows I've got hematite on the left of the 32 and Rose on the right and I'm going to follow that left and right pattern and around the disk so I've got left hematite right Rose left hematite right Rose the 16 and over on the Left hematite and rose again so I'm just leading with the hematite wire and following it with the Rose and you'll see that it's kind of lumpy in the middle it's gonna take a few few weaves to get that nice braid started so let's make sure it's up tighten as ready as we can be with our tension and we're just gonna start braiding in the eighth warp order coming up to the left and down to the right now as I go I'm going to adjust the wire little by little I'm gonna rotate and once again you can if you can use bobbins for this if you'd like and usually it'll be over your own lap working and not on a table so that'll help - coming up to the left down to the right rotating to the left down to the right and when I was working with the 26 gauge I did wind the wire because in that case it's just thin enough that it kinks a little more readily and gets a little more tangled but upward of 24 and 22 I just found it easier not to have to jostle those Bob around so I'm just getting my start here up to the left down to the right and counterclockwise and what I'm gonna do is take my finger underneath and just begin to pinch those wires close together because ultimately what I want is for the angles of these wires to Bend really down onto each other and create a nice tight fit and when you're working with the wire you do want to give a bit more of a tug and a grip and a pull to this process it just takes a little more wrangling I think and the end result is pretty neat I'm gonna work a little more and get this braid formed for you so you can see how it's turning out and we'll move on from there so I've created a bit of a weave here let me just get to my three up and one down so that I know her leaving off I could set it down if I wanted to be able to resume I'm gonna flip this over and give you a chance just to see how that braid is developing and it's very subtle with the rose and the hematite I kind of had expected more of a contrast but it's still a pretty look so we've got that going I'd say we're at about an inch now for the two earrings that we're gonna make we're gonna weave at 10 inches of this so I'm gonna keep going with it and then when we're at a stopping point I will come back with you and we'll clip the lengths that we need for the loops we're going to make and I'll show you how to finish those off with the capsule bead cap and earring hook so I've created about a nine and a half to ten inch braid here and you'll see that the remainder of my wires and as I've been working for quite a while they're kind of warped now I could have if I wanted been more meticulous and drawn the wire through the nylon jaw pliers just straighten those out but I will say that for the dwarf it's cagey enough that I don't think that straightening those wires would have made a difference in the look of the design this is just a very different sort of finished look than it would be if you were doing flat kumihimo so here we are and I'm gonna give a final pinch to the center point there before I take the wires off of the disk I work down kinda to the nubs of these you could get yourself a little more leeway if you're more comfortable and pinching the ends you'll see they don't pop off in an unwinding which is good they kind of stay bound but even so I'm gonna take and twist that end to keep it tight and I'm ready to take off my weight on the other side and at this point I'm going to bring in my ruler because we'll want to measure out four and a half inch lengths for our loop earring so let me find a portion just down from the end here and clip like so let's see first I'm going to clip this one end just with my flush cutter and before I do anything else I'm actually a gripped those ends and again just give it a little bit of a twist just to make sure they don't go anywhere just working the pliers around slightly then about four and a half inches down I'm going to clip again and what this will do is give us about a 4-inch loop that's visible we want a quarter inch on each side that will be eaten up by the capsule bead cap get those a squeeze and let's cut our next length and make sure that they match and actually it just to be safe I'm going to rip and twist the end of this square a little bit I'm back down and measure four and a half inches and clip squeezing all right so let's hold those up and make sure we're on point here actually this one looks slightly longer so I'm gonna clip that because a little bit makes a difference when you're measuring in these cases squeeze those alright so there we are with our two even lengths of eight warp wirework kumihimo and i'm ready to bring in a section of wire that's about two inches actually I'm gonna give myself three inches here I'll cut two of those lengths and these are gonna help us bind to the ends and create our wrapped wire loop so let me take my all and I think this is gonna help me make a little opening within that weave to slide the wire through like so and before I actually do that I'm going to want to form my kind of rudimentary loop I can micro adjust that once I get it wrapped together so let me also make a little opening on this side a toothpick would probably work any little sharp thing that you have to kind of create an opening for yourself and I'm going to slide this three-inch section of wire through both sides of the weave and pull those up over the top to make sure it's secure what I want to do is pinch the two together and bind them so I'm actually going to squeeze the whole thing and get a grip and here's where that extra quarter-inch is going to come in where we want some extra space to work with so bringing those two ends together that we're over the top I'm binding around both sides just to make sure those ends don't go anywhere using my plier to help get some leverage and then squeezing all right and now I've got this portion of wire coming off the top and that's gonna be what I feed through my end cap now if I need to I can squeeze the wire a little bit tighter around the top to get it to fit into the cap so I'm gonna make that adjustment here you could also use a slightly thinner gauge wire if this part gives you trouble taper that wire a little bit and try it again all right so that goes in like so with the wire coming off the top and I'm ready to make my wrapped wire loop so I'll bring in my round nose pliers and grip right at the base of that wire against the bead cap and I want to be sure that my loop is actually going the right direction for the earring hook so let me go off to this side staying parallel with the design create my loop come around the base and coil that shut I've elected to use the rose wire just to tie in some of that color that we used but it's your choice just put that tail and straighten it up here's where we can bend our loop and create the shape that we want you can also come in with your chain nose pliers and make some micro adjustments this way too and adjust that weed if you want to flatten out some of the warps if you think that's necessary so here's my earring hook I'm just gonna open that enough to fit through the loop of my wrap and close it there's one earring now I'm going to do the very same thing for this other one and then I will show you the pair so I've taken my wire and come through the weave up and over the top and I've created a bit of a bind there so I'm ready to bring on my cap just as soon as I give this tailor clip shoot this one straight off the top and string through my cap here if it'll let me bring that down now I can also decide at this point which side I like better and just aesthetically I kind of like this side there's a just a wee bit of wire showing up up in that crevice when I flip it over I see it less so again that's your design eye your choice all right so I'm going to grip with my round nose plier off the top of the cap create my 90 degree angle match up the size of the loop along the length of my plier come around the top and create my coil so you can just see there's a lot of design opportunity here a lot of fun things you can do with necklaces earrings bracelets I will say in my experience with the round braids and the wire that I don't know how it would be that Bebe's on I'm a experiment with that if you do let us know how it goes for you so let me bring in my earring hook and make sure those shapes match up open the loop of this find my front side slide it on and there we are we have two beautiful kumihimo wire work earrings to go with our carpe diem necklace I hope you enjoyed this video all of these supplies are available at beadaholique.com there's also a full written instructions for the necklace on our site and be sure to click the bell on our YouTube channel to get notifications for all the latest updates we have new videos coming out every week thanks so much for watching