How to Make a Wire Wrapped Gemstone Jewelry Set

Name: How to Make a Wire Wrapped Gemstone Jewelry Set
Brand: Beadaholique
SKU: VID-0144
Availability: InStock

SKU VID-0144

Designer: Megan Milliken

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In this video, learn how to make a wire wrapped necklace, earrings, and ring with gemstone beads and spiral accents.

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Audio Transcript

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi this is Megan with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you how to make a little set of a ring, some earrings and a necklace using these eight-millimeter impression jasper gemstone beads. They have purple and an aqua blue and kind of a coppery orange peach color in them. They're going to be wire wrapped. You're going to use some artistic wire in this really pretty bare copper color. We're gonna use both eighteen gauge and twenty-four gauge We'll also need some jump rings and these are five-millimeter twenty gauge jump rings in copper, genuine copper and then some copper earring findings. You're also gonna need some ribbon and I'm using this really pretty deep purple color. The tools that we're gonna need are some E6000 glue, a pair of flush cutters, a pair of wire looping pliers, a large size of the Wubbers, bail making pliers, a pair of nylon jaw pliers, pair of round nose pliers, a pair of chain nose pliers. These are a lot of tools but we're doing several different methods of wire wrapping and you might be able to find other tools that work for you but these are the ones that I used. We'll go ahead and start with the link that you'll use to build both of the earrings and also the links for the necklace. So go ahead and take your eighteen gauge wire and use flush cutters to cut yourself a piece about six inches long. Then you're going to use nylon jaw pliers to straighten out the wire get any bends out of it just run it through a several times Now I'm using this large size of the bail making pliers and I've basically measured and found that a larger diameter side of this is just a little bit larger than the diameter of the bead I want to use so that when I make these different components there's just enough room to put the bead in and then have the wire wrapping around it. So I believe this one is about nine millimeters or so, Maybe nine or ten. The beads are eight. Anything else you want to use you could find a pen that is round and that is the right diameter. You could find any kind of tool or household object that's the right diameters that's a perfect cylinder and use that. I'm just using this because I happen to have it handy and it was the right size. So take your thicker wire and bend it around and go ahead and bend it around and squeeze it together to kind of give yourself that teardrop shape. Go ahead and push it in really well. Get that shape the way you want it. Take your nylon jaw pliers and make sure that the ends are straight. Then when you pull it off you're going to use your flush cutters and you want to make sure that you have the flush edge towards the project so that they have a nice squared off edge instead of the pointy edge that this side will leave. You want to cut about an inch down from where your wires meet. Give yourself about an inch of working room. You're going to take a pair of round nose pliers and pretty close to the tip so that the inside circle is smaller pinch the ends roll that down into a little circle and then do the same with the other side and then take a pair of chain nose pliers and you wanna go ahead first and just squished that flat be gentle you can scratch the finish on the wire it is copper all the way through so you're not going to take the finish off but it will show scratches and some will show but long as you're gentle so it won't be too bad. Then you're going to take one of the loops put it towards the base of the chain nose pliers and hold it pretty firmly and then you're going to just bend and rotate it and bend it to get a little spiral flip it over and do the same thing on the other side and you can go ahead and pull it through the opening between the teeth to bring it around and if it loses a little bit of its shape that's fine you can put it back on your form when you're done. And then if you're loop isn't totally totally flush in there you can grab your round nose pliers and move it a little bit. You wan to get your shape right go ahead and put it back on the form And you should end up with a little tear drop shape loop with the spirals on the sides. Go ahead and pull the spirals a little bit a way from the middle. What you want to do is give yourself space to wrap wire in there pull them away just a little bit. Next your gonna take twenty four gauge wire and cut off a piece that's about six inches long. You won't use it all but you to have enough to hold onto too. If your wire is not straight go ahead and run it between your nylon jaw pliers to straighten it out. So go ahead and take your link piece and make sure that the edges in here are touching and just grab the wire with one hand and wrap it with the other and you want to make sure that when you wra around that your loops are nice and snug and that they touch each other without a lot of extra space. So go ahead and wrap around about four times and if you end up with your links kind of staggered instead of together you can use you're nylon jaw pliers flatten it down. Take both ends of the wrapping to the back and then use a pair of flush cutters to trim the wire on the back. Then go ahead and take your chain nose pliers and gentle tighten up your wire wrapping. Make sure that it's nice and flat, nice and straight. You want to make sure that your cut edges are tucked securely and neatly onto the back side. So this is the basic link that you have. Next you're gonna put a bead in there and this stone comes on a strand. I just took it off of the strand so I could be choosier about which beads I was picking. So you can go through there and find the ones you really want. I like the ones that have a little bit more of the blue in them. Some of them don't have any. Some have quite a bit. So take a bead and then take another length of the twenty four gauge wire make sure it's nice and straight put the bead onto the wire about half way down Then you're gonna take the bead on the wire and place it over the top of the front of your little link and we're gonna wrap going towards the spirals. So go ahead and just start by pulling your wire down and through on one side and pull that nice and tight. Then we're gonna actually to the other side. Hold that in place there. Try to go directly across within the little loop there. You'll have some wiggle room for straightening it out later but try to keep it straight as possible. I like to grab the end with chain nose pliers and pull it really tight. will bend up the wire. So make sure what you're grabbing is closer to the end because that's the part you'll be cutting off anyway and then loop your wire back though and keep working in a tight little spiral. Go around about four times. Once you have four coils go back to the other side and pull that nice and tight. Just repeat process on the side. And one more You're going to bend the wire to the back trim the excess off with flush cutters. And then take a chain nose pliers again and tighten that up and make sure that it's laying nice and flat on the back. So for making this necklace what you do is make five links just like this. Then you're gonna take jump rings and just attach the jump rings to each of them to attach your five. Once you have all five together take this link of ribbon and cut it in half right in the middle and then you take the raw edge and your going to thread it through one of your jump rings and bring it through a few inches about three inches flatten out the larger piece fold that up you want to go ahead and fold the end into the bigger piece, have it kind of wrap around and envelop that. Bring the loop to the end and then tie an overhand knot. You wanna make sure that you get the loose edge encased in the knot. Pull the knot down You tighten it to keep it close to your jump ring and pull it really tight. Then you go back to the back pulldown you're mean piece of ribbon. Just trim this close using a pair scissors of a pair of flush cutters. Just make sure you don't get the main part of the ribbon. Only the tail piece. And then you will take a toothpick or scrap piece of wire and apply just a little bit of E6000 glue just to seal that end Make sure it's not gonna fall through. Just a dab right onto the loose end. You wan to make sure you don't get too much and you don't get it all over onto the other part of the ribbon because it will soak through. So just a very little bit and left that dry. Once it's all dry take that jump ring and you're going to use your chain nose pliers to attach the ribbon with the jump ring to the end link with the gemstones. Make sure that it hangs straight and that the the knotted part of it hangs the right way and then you just repeat that with the other side and then that is how your necklace hangs. You just go ahead and tie a bow at the back of the necklace. That's how you make a necklace with this link. How to make a earring with this link we need to add this little piece here. Instead of doing this wrap just like that you will make the spiral. I'm just taking this apart so that I can show you the same thing You will do that method for the for the five links for your necklace and then you would do a lightly different method when you're doing this for your earrings. You make the main spiral exactly the same way. Then you're going to take another length of the twenty four gauge wire Give yourself enough that you have plenty to work with. Go ahead and take your wire looping pliers and make yourself a wire loop near the end of your artistic gauge wire and then just we want to put a bend on each end here so that your loop comes off like that on both sides and then you trim the shorter end pretty short. You just want a little bit of a lip, an eighth of an inch on that shorter end. Put your wire back on your wire looping pliers and wrap it around the shorter end when you get to the end Now you're going to take this piece and attach it onto your link. You want it to go to the back side and hold that by the loop and you want to hold it near the top and then take the whole piece of wire around and loop that around the top of your link about four times and trim that off and then you go in with your chain nose pliers to tighten that up You want the wire wrapped loop part to be in the middle and the end piece of wire to be nice and tight in there and you can also take a pair of round nose pliers or the wire looping pliers and grab a hold of your loop and straighten it out. Then you take your earring finding and you gently open up the loop on your earring finding and put it on your loop and close up. that's how you turn that into an earring. You just make two of those to have a pair of earrings Finally I'm going to show you how to use a similar technique to make a ring to match your set. To do that you need to get quite a bit longer piece of the eighteen gauge. I like to have extra. So I'm going to work with about a foot You probably won't need that much. You can play around and see but I would rather throw a little bit away then end up with not enough Ahead and straighten out your wire. Okay now we're gonna make the loop for the bead Just wrap it around your wubbers or whatever cylindrical shape you use and push in to make a teardrop. And now for the ring in particular it's really important to get those wires nice and straight because they're gonna form the base of your ring so it goes around your finger and try to get it nice and straight you can pick your wire to either side to go down the length. So when you have your wire nice and straight I'm going to take a ring mandrel and choose which size you want your ring to be I'm going to make a size seven so go ahead and wrap all the way around at the seven mark and bring that all the way down. Try to make that loop really circular because it's easy to do it before you put the bead on. And then you're going to take flush cutters trim about two thirds of an inch cut from where it meets the loop and take your round nose pliers going to bend those into spirals just like you did on the links for the other pieces and continue the spiral with the chain nose pliers. It can be easier to work with a little bit of time on each one. Use your nylon pliers to straighten that out and make it flat. They're not quite even, you can fuss with that later. Right now as soon as you get them to stay out of the way we're going to attach our bead to that loop. So go ahead and put it back on your base shape. Make sure that it's nice and round. Select a bead for your ring. And take another length of your twenty four gauge wire this is a scrap from before string the bead on and you're going to wrap this just like you did with the other links working towards the longer end of the main wire pull one out of the way and then go to the other side and wrap it around a couple of times wrap it on the other side and finish up that wrapping and then you're going to bring both of those wires to the back trim the excess off and use your chain nose pliers to tighten that up and then push the wire down nice and flat so it doesn't scratch your finger when your wearing the ring. Go ahead and straighten out how it sits Get it situated how you like it and then tighten those down so they don't move around and go back to your ring mandrel. Push down on the end of the loop to try to straighten that out a little bit and get your spirals to meet up And if you touched too much you might need to bend them down to curve them further into a spiral and if they don't touch enough you might actually need to undo a little bit of a spiral go ahead and get that nice and even and that's how you do the earring You can use similar methods to make these quick little links and make the whole set of jewelry out of them. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!

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