If you are interested in purchasing a Prumihimo book, disk or kit you might find that they are showing as out of stock, but if you try again the following week you might be more lucky. The reason for this is that international shipping is now quite complex and time consuming and I have got a busy summer ahead of me, so I will only be available to ship for one or two weeks in each month. I do not have an advance schedule of when I will be shipping, but the products will never show as out of stock for very long. If you are in the UK you can order my disks and bothof books from Riverside beads. T ..read more

I am very sad to have to issue such a warning, but I am afraid that it has become very necessary due to the actions of shameless fraudsters! It has come to my attention that a number of books available on amazon have used images and text of my work and the work of others. This contravenes international copyright law and no reputable publisher would have anything to do with such books. How has this happened? Up to now, if someone wanted to write their own book they would either need to have a contract with an established publisher or they would have to finance the publishing of the book themsel ..read more

Hooray! My books and disks are now back in stock! I decided to hold all sales of physical products early in December and there were several reasons for this. It is something I do every year in mid December to ensure that people do not order too close to Christmas. I do not want people to be disappointed because their book or disk does not arrive in time for the big day. A series of postal strikes in the UK meant that I decided to bring forward the closing of my shop for physical products. I also felt the need for a bit of a break from shipping. Shipping is surprisingly time-consuming, particu ..read more

What is so good about the SallyBeadJewelry kumihimo disk? In this blog I would like to tell you about the kumihimo disk designed by Sally Battis some years ago and to explain what its best features are. As far as I am aware, Sally was the first person to produce a double thickness kumihimo disk. When the first foam disk was designed by Makiko Tada the majority of kumihimo was textile based, but once the jewellery making world became aware of the possibilities for adding beads to kumihimo using this accessible and low-cost tool there was an explosion of creativity. It was no longer necessary to ..read more

What could be more summery than a pretty braided bracelet of flowers? The flower garden bracelet kit contains the materials needed to make a charming bracelet featuring a row of flower beads, nestled in a bed of toning colours of seed bead. Each flower bead is encircled by a tiny ring of galvanised silver seed beads. It is finished with a secure and comfortable flower button fastening. The braid is made on the regular round disk, which is not included. A drop of glue also needs to be supplied by the purchaser. The braid is a counted design, which means that the beads are threaded onto the cor ..read more

I am really pleased to be able to offer the Riverside Beads 7 cord disk for sale from this website. What is so good about it? First of all, I will tell you a bit about this braid. It is a very simple construction and early examples are widespread, so its origins could lie in several different cultures. Early examples have been found in Europe and has been used in straw plaiting and hair braiding. There are also suggestions that it is Viking in origin and that it was made on a round disk called a trollen wheel, but the historical accuracy of this is disputed by some researchers. The likelihood ..read more

This weekend I have been learning a new skill and in the process have been able to give a tiny bit of support to our fellow creatives in Ukraine. There have been many suggestions of how to help those in Ukraine with small businesses by buying digital downloads from Etsy. By searching in Etsy and indicating Ukraine in the filter you can find Ukrainian sellers of downloadable tutorials and this is a great way to help people to keep their businesses going in these terrible times. From my search results it would seem that kumihimo is not well known in Ukraine, so I searched for other items that mi ..read more

How time flies! It was  5 years ago that I launched my first book, The Prumihimo Disk – A fresh approach to kumihimo and I am happy to say that the book continues to sell well and since that first delivery of books I have authorised 4 further print runs. From this perspective it is hard to remember how nervous I was about the launch of the book, so it is a good exercise to think back to the journey of this little book. The desire to write a book about kumihimo arose not long after I started to braid over a decade ago because at that time there were very few books about kumihimo and ..read more

I have recently taken delivery of a new print run of my second book, Kumihimo Endings, and my hall is full of heavy boxes. I would really like to try to reduce the number of boxes I have to take up two flights of stairs to my stock room, so I have decided to throw in a free Prumihimo disk with every purchase of this book. This is a time limited offer for the purpose of reducing my stock levels. If you do not have this excellent little book, now is a great time to get one. If Prumihimo braiding is new to you then you are going to have great fun exploring the possibilities of this disk and your ..read more

I generally prefer to use glass, ceramic or stone beads in my work. There are several reasons for this. The most important is that if I spend a lot of time and effort making something I want the quality of the materials to reflect the value of my hard work. Poor quality materials can downgrade the value of a piece through easily worn off finishes or irregular bead sizes and colour consistency. Glass, ceramic and stone also add physical weight to the piece, helping it to hang well when worn. However, there are two exceptions I make and I have talked about these before in my blog. The first is ..read more