How to Make the Deluxe Beaded Kumihimo Bracelet Kit with Spiral Bicone Focal

Deluxe Beaded Kumihimo Bracelet-Blue/Silver - Exclusive Beadaholique Jewelry Kit SKU: KB-SP-036QZ $19.49

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com Oh bracelets which are an exclusive kit from beadaholique.com and they all feature very sparkly spiraled bicone beads in the middle and then they've got seed beads on the outside and they're finished with a magnetic clasp so we got four colorways we have the blue and silver with the white seed beads and the silver clasp we've got this really pretty fuchsia with these wonderful like a bee vitriol bicones in the middle and matte black on the outside you have a one here that is very much like a Resort Collection which is gold and turquoise and white and then we have a very elegant black and gold version as well so I want to show you how to make one of these from start to finish and also I want to show you what you get in the kit so the beauty of a beadaholique exclusive kit is you get absolutely everything you need supply wise to make the project so we're going to make this one here and you're going to get all the bicones the seed beads the clasp the glue to glue in the clasp as well as the cord to do the braiding and what's really nice about the kumihimo kits is we also give you the main tools you need which are going to be a disc right here which has an instruction manual you will get full instructions with this kit as well but it is nice that you actually also get this instruction booklet which has other projects listed and then you're going to get eight bobbins to wind your cord and beads on to so that makes this a really nice set that you might want to give as a gift or keep for yourself but you get everything you need the only tools that are not included are really pretty common household type tools like a pair of scissors you're going to need to cut your cord you're going to need some tape and then you're going to need some type of wait now they do make kumihimo weight which I have right here but I want to show you how to make one at home and you just to take a binder clip which you're going to clip onto your cord some string and then something heavy I have a tool for my dapping set but you could also just use like a little bag of pennies or something it doesn't have to be something as specific as this this just happened to be what I had around so without further ado let's start making this bracelet so I'm going to go ahead spill out my tube of beads and what I need to do first is put all my beads onto my cords so we're going to do an 8 strand beaded kumihimo braid so we're going to need 8 links about 36 inches or so each for each cord so one and I am just roughing this I know that this is about 36 inches if it's 34 if it's 40 inches it's not a big deal you just don't want it to be too short so I would not go under about 32 34 inches you all right so I've got all eight strands now I need to load the beads onto them you'll notice I have quite a record left over which is why I always suggest you know adding a little bit extra than what you're going to need just so you don't end up having them be too short but now you have extra to do another project with and you're going to have the disc and the bobbins so all you'll need to do is add the beads in the clasp for a future project so how do we load these beads well we're going to take one length of our cord and one bobbin so these are what the bobbins look like it can be a little hard to see I know on this white background so I'm gonna put it against my hand basically they flip open and they snap shut and what we're going to do is we're going to wind our cord in the center and track our beads in there now because the beads can be a little bit heavier than if you are just doing standard kumihimo without beads I do like to tape my cord in here and that's just a little quick tip something I found that works for me so I take a little bit of tape put it on the end of the cord and then I'm just going to put that right into the center of the bobbin now for this particular bracelet to create this effect where we have the seed beads on the outside the spiral bicones in the middle and the seed beads again on the outside we're going to load the beads in the following pattern we're going to do 12 of the seed beads 12 of the bicones and 12 of the seed beads and we're going to make sure that we just do a single color on each strand so we don't want to mix these two on the same strand so I'm going to do 12 so I'm just going to pick them up right on the cord you don't need a needle at four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve go on there right okay so now I'm going to do twelve bicones now if you have a big eye needle you could use it for this but you definitely don't need to have one we're just going to place these right onto the S lon all right so I've got 12 12 I need 12 more seed beads so a little tip is if your tip of your cord gets a little bit frayed just cut it off then you have a little bit of an easier time getting the beads on if it's not frayed okay here we go so just double check your counts just before you end up doing the final winding of the bobbins the two four six eight ten twelve all right there are our beads and now what we're going to do is we're going to let them sink all the way to the bottom to where that tape is and we're just going to wind the cord around the interior of the bobbin until we have about twelve inches sticking out we're going to set that aside and now we're going to wind our other seven bobbins and we're going to want to wind three more with the exact combo we just did here so twelve black twelve the fuchsia twelve of the black and then for the other four we want to do 12 black twelve of our contrasting color which is just lovely bead right here so it'll be twelve twelve twelve and we'll do that for the other four bobbin so we'll end up with a total of eight bobbins wound with these beads all right all my bobbins have been loaded with the beads so now I'm going to clear everything out of the way that I don't need so I'm not going to need my cord anymore I'll need my glue and my clasp later but I don't need it right now and I'm not going to need my instruction manual either so what we're going to do is we're going to take the ends of all these different bobbins of the cords on the bobbins and we're going to line them up right now just tie a simple overhand knot and you want to tie it down towards the end of the strands you don't want to tie it way up here just at the very end and tie a knot now we're going to take this knot and put it through the disk going from the side with the writing to the blank side just like so now holding that knot between our fingers we're going to line up our cords on our disk and we're going to do a cord to the left and right of each of the dots now we are going to make sure these are in a particular order so we're going to start with one of the cords with the pink colored beads up to the left of the 32 and now we're going to want another cord with pink beads to the right of the 32 I'm just going to kind of untangle these a little bit they got a little tangled when I made that knot not a big deal this is just going to be the start of our braid which is actually going to end up being cut off in the end anyways alright so I've got another bobbin with the pink beads to the right of the 32 now down by the 16 so opposite the 32 we're going to do another one with the pink beads and next to it another pink beads okay so then we're just left with the other color bead and so we're just going to line it up to the left on the right of the eighth and the left and the right of the 24 and these have little grooves in them the disc and then your that's what I'm actually pulling the cord down into alright so we have got our disc all set up and the bobbins are just hanging with the beads below we're going to take the weight that you made or if you have a Kumi weight at home you can use it of course and we're just going to clip it on to that knot and what this is doing is that extra weight is going to help to pull all the beads and the cord and the braid down through that middle hole and keep a really nice uniform so you have a really nice neat looking braid so we're going to start our braiding at this point so you're going to take the cord that's to the left of the 16 and pull it up to the left of the 31 then we're going to go to the other side I'm going to take the cord that's to the right of the 32 and pull it to the right of the 15 we're going to rotate counterclockwise one rotation we're going to do the same exact thing so left cord up to the left right cord down to the right rotate and this is just the basic fundamental way you kumihimo is very simple it's actually very zen-like left up to the left right cord down to the right rotate now we're doing non beaded kumihimo to start with because we want to get a good braid which is going to then allow us to finish off the kumihimo project at the end and attach our clasp because we don't want to attach the clasp to the actual beads so we're going to do about an inch of non beaded kumihimo so left up to the left right down to the right rotate now let's say you want to stop your kumihimo at one point and you want be able to put down your disc so then you're going to take the left to the left and then you could put it down you can walk away and you'll know that when you have the three strands up top when you go ahead and grab your disc again you'll want to make sure that those are up top you've got one at the bottom and you just know you need to complete that second half of this action this rotation so right down to the right rotate now we're just going to keep doing this until we have a full inch of non beaded kumihimo and at first it's not going to look like anything you're not gonna really be able to see what your braid is looking like but soon it will materialize and you'll see you've got a really nice braid started okay I'm going to stop here because I have about an inch beaded and so what we're going to now need to do is add our beads so remember the three strands at the top is where you want to stop so you can put this down and figure out where you left off so in order to do the beaded part we actually need to go ahead and scoot the beads up along the strand so unwind a bobbin and scoot all of the beads up towards the disc now rewind the bobbin just with the empty cord and now this is really a personal preference on how much cord you're comfortable working with because you're going to need to be scooting it along as you go I like to have it about that long hanging off my bobbin otherwise my bobbin just get it end up getting tangled beneath so I'm going to go ahead just like so now here's another tip the beads are kind of heavy and they do cause the s lawn to sometimes come out of the bobbins so I'm going to just take another little piece of tape and I'm going to put it right here along the outer edge of my bobbin and now what's going to happen is it's going to prevent the slipping from occurring so that's going to be nice and secure so we're going to do this on all of our bobbins we're going to scoot all those beads out rewind the bobbins and add that little piece of tape okay we are all ready to start doing beaded kumihimo now and the beauty about beaded kumihimo is there's absolutely no difference in technique between beaded kumihimo and non beaded kumihimo nor doesn't matter what type of beads you're using so these could be any type or shape of bead it would not change the technique so we're just going to continue on now but only one modification so it's going to be the same technique of left up right down but we're going to slip a bead every time we move a strand so I just took a bead scoot it it up with my fingernail it's going to scoot along the edge of the disc and go into that Center well and that bead is going to catch under this strand right here so think of this as a bridge and is catching under that bridge and we're just going to then place our strand right into the same notch we would have anyways if it was non beaded so now we're going to rotate same exact thing so left up to the left but we're going to grab that bead scoot it up and let it fall into the well it's just going to catch under that thread bridge and then just complete your motion and then right down just adding a bead and I know it could be a little bit hard to tell because we're using black beads on black thread we do have actual other videos on beadaholique.com with contrasting beads showing you how to do this technique if that's a little bit easier for you I just want to show you how to make one of the actual kits that is available so I had to choose between black or white and I thought the black would be easier to show against a kumihimo disk here but we're just catching that bead underneath yeah so if you are at all having trouble seeing this please do check out our other videos on how to do beaded kumihimo it will show you with more contrasting colors but hopefully you're getting the idea of this we're just catching that bead under and going up but we did not change our technique at all so I'm just going to keep doing this until I actually run out of beads I'm going to do a little bit beading off camera here just to finish up with the actual seed bead portion and then when I get to the bicones I'm going to show you the start of beading those as well it's not going to change in terms of technique but you'll really be able to see the spiral up here and the pattern appear as well which is really fun so I'm going to do that for a minute and then I will come back and show you what the bicones alright so I want to show you what we've got so far we've got the non beaded portion then we've got the beaded portion which is this black right here and now we're just about ready to start the bicones so we're not going to change our method at all but I do want to show you how the bicones start to take shape and that spiral appears so same process we're just going to slip that bicone underneath the thread bridge and go ahead and complete our action rotate now be careful that you do make sure that the bicones really do catch under the bridge each time sometimes you'll have to fiddle with them a little bit I'm going to do a couple and then I am going to go off-camera again because I do want to keep this video to a digestible amount of time it could be quite a long video if I showed every single bead being put into place but I do want to show you the basic process I'm going to do one more and then I'm going to adjust the tension of my threads which is a handy little tip so I got to a good stopping point so now I'm just going to tug on them a little bit I'm not going to take them out of place but I'm just going to tug on each one and sometimes that helps if you are having trouble getting those bicones to catch under the thread bridge just making sure that your threads are nice and tight really does help let's do a couple more so you can see a spiral and then I'll come back when it's time to do the seed beads again okay I think that's good enough so I've got my three up top so I'm good to stop if we look underneath you can see what's starting to take shape we've just got the pink on top of the pink and just starting to spiral so keep beating I'll come back when the seed beads start again just so that we're continuing on this process together but the technique is not going to change this entire time until we're done with all the beads so you can see we've completed all of our bicones and so we've got more than half the bracelet done so we're going to start the seed beads again I do want to show you what this is going to look like for you so because the bicones are a bigger bead and they're a different shape of beads and seed bead if you're used to working just with seed beads you'll notice that there's a like a larger gap in here don't worry about that because when you start your seed beads again which you already strung in the correct order it's going to start to close up that gap and your strands are going to get tighter again so we're just doing the same exact process just do a few so you can kind of see what's happening with that Center okay starting to be able to start to be able to see what's happening so now we are narrowing it in and is getting to be tighter again but what's nice is we did create a really pretty focal that's very different and I think it's quite striking so you can do this with your other kumihimo projects too that you have once you learn this technique it's fun to add different shaped beads in the middle or maybe you want to do them on the sides but for these with these exclusive kits you get all the ingredients you need to make these really pretty bracelets with these sparkly centers okay so I don't think you probably by now you get the idea of how we're doing this and end with three up top so you can see we've got the seed beads the center and we're starting the seed beads again so I want you to keep braiding and I'm going to do it off camera until you run out of seed beads and then do another inch of non beaded braided kumihimo so you'll want it to look identical on both sides and then this is the part we're going to use to finish off and attach our clasp which is what we'll do when I come back so our braiding is done you can see that we've got the nice long braid I'm going to take the little clip off of the end what we can do at this point is we need to go ahead and pull it off of the disc so I'm just going to grip it right at the top I'm going to pull all of these guys off and pull it through just a little bit and then I'm going to go ahead and cut I'm also going to now take my clip and clip it on to this end just to hold those strands until I finish them so we can put the kumihimo disk away at this point put the bobbins away and now we need to bring out our glue our clasp which for this kit is a magnetic clasp and one tip whenever you're working with a magnetic glue in clasp you always want to attach it separate it so you want to separate out the two halves and that is because when you put glue in this well if this is not totally sealed sometimes glue can seep through and he'll end up gluing your clasp shut which we have done so please separate it out just save yourself some frustration after you've made this really pretty braid so I have some post-its and I just have a spare I pin a toothpick scrap piece of wire whatever you want you just need an applicator for the glue and we're going to need our scissors so you have extra s lon that came with your kit and that's what you're going to use to finish it but I want you to be able to see what I'm doing so for the purpose of this video I grabbed a contrasting color of s lon just to help hopefully make it a little easier to see you're going to cut a length that's about 14 to 18 inches and we are going to tie off our braid so if you look here the clasp is really quite nicely in scale for the actual bracelet itself but our braid that doesn't have beads is really thin and we need to somehow bulk that up so that it will fit nicely into this well to do that we're going to take a cut piece of s lon and we're going to knot it around the non beaded part of the braid so right up towards the beads and we're just going to make a nice knot okay now what we're going to do is we're going to make several more knots you have some freedom here we're just adding bulk so I'm just making a couple knots and then what you can do see now it's gotten a little bit wider go make a knot on the other side now you want to stay down towards the beaded portion just because you only have so much depth to the well of your glue in clasp so you can look right here now if you want to you can just wind it to add extra bulk and then will not this part as well let's tie a knot with this I'm going to make a surgeon's knot we made a double knot there and I'm going to knot it even more you just don't want to exceed the diameter of your clasp so if you're kind of eyeballing this with the well that's looking pretty good to me so I'm going to tie another knot on the other side okay I'm going to cut my strands now this is a scary part but if your knots are tight it should be fine you're going to cut your braid like so so now we're going to fill the well of the clasp with some glue okay so this is a brand new tube of e6000 to puncture the seal there's a little point on the end of the cap you just press it and the glue will come out I had to seal it back up so we're just going to fill that well with a generous amount of glue all along the sides try to get it down in towards the bottom just take the end go ahead and fit it into place squish it down and there we go and if since you're going to be using the black s lon you're not going to have to worry about that contrasting color showing at all but there we have just finished an end and we will do the exact same method for the other end and what your result will look like is this let me bring out the other colorways real quick so we've got this one here that we just created we've got golden black we have blue silver and white and all the magnetic clasps are sticking together and then we have turquoise gold and white you can find these on the Beauty holic website and they are called deluxe buted kumihimo bracelet kits you