I’m currently temporarily living in the south and I’ve been moving bits of my belongings to my new flat for next year. As a result, I’ve had to move things that are non-urgent to me first; things such as my jewellery tools and paper! It truly is a sad time.

Fortunately, I’ve found a wonderful shop nearby where I’m staying right now, called Queenbeads, who are a bead boutique shop and a bead design studio that sell jewellery kits containing everything you need to make a piece of jewellery. My first item of choice (yes, there will be more to come!) was a kumihimo bracelet kit. It comes in a sealed recyclable paper bag, and the store had examples of the product so you could see first-hand what the result would be.

The contents of this kit were the following: a foam kumihimo disc, light and dark blue cord, kumihimo end caps, jewellery glue, binding thread, and instructions.

Only two colours were provided but three bracelets can be made, so you would need to vary the patterns.

I’ve never used a kumihimo disc before, it is incredibly satisfying to build the bracelet like this!

The instructions are very clear and contain pictures for every step! The colours are different though, and that’s because there is another kumihimo set using red and black cords.
By setting up the cords on the disc correctly, the bracelet is created simply by folding the cords over each other in the same way. It’s really simple! The kumihimo disc provided is incredibly useful, I’m not sure it could be done by hand.

After a few minutes of folding cords, the bracelet starts to form underneath the disc, in the centre. When the bracelet is the desired length, the remaining cords must be cut off and then the cap is applied with the glue. And there you have it, a kumihimo bracelet! This bracelet was made with alternating colours of light blue and dark blue. Two more bracelets were made after this, one using cords of the same colour, and one using three cords of one colour and one of the other.