Continuing on with my kumihimo adventures, I started learning how to incorporate beads. With a normal braid, you need a thicker cord, but this time you will need beading cord and appropriately sized beads. Here, I’ve used 0.5mm cord, size 8/0 seed beads, and 4mm crystals and pearls.
You start by braiding a little with the cord for the end caps, then you want to lay out the beads so that the pattern spirals up the bracelet.
I bought a lot of seed beads a long time ago and they just sit in a box on my desk, not really being used much. At some point, I moved flats and the beads got shaken up as well! It was time to do something with them.
I bought this book from a Waterstones a month ago called “A Beginner’s Guide to Kumihimo” by Donna Mckean-Smith as I wanted to learn how to make beaded kumihimo bracelets. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to make kumihimo.
I wrapped a large tiger eye cabochon with copper wire recently! The shape was quite unusual, so I ran the wire all the way around and sideways as well.
I added some topaz Swarovski crystals and wrapped the wire ends around the frame.
Materials: tiger eye cabochon, 0.8mm copper wire, topaz Swarovski crystals
I made two sets of kusudama flowers with this red and pink paper set, and the first set were used in the bouquet that I posted in my last post.The second set have now been glued together to make a kusudama ball. I haven’t made one of these for a long time! The flowers were not quite the same size so gluing them together was quite difficult.I added a loop of twine thread to go down the middle and then attached a handmade tassel at the end.
