How to Finish Zola Elements Chain and Make a Bracelet

SKU VID-1534
Designer: Julie Bean
In this video you will learn how to both cut and finish Zola Elements chain available at Beadaholique.com. In some instances it involves cutting off little bars whereas other times it means cutting through a link while making sure the next link is intact. Also learn what size and gauge jump rings will fit through the various chain links. Finally, you will learn how to make the Venetia Bracelet by sliding multiple lengths of cut chain into a Nunn Design ribbon cord end and then finishing it with an adjustable length clasp.
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Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com i want to show you how to finish the ends with jump rings so how to cut this particular chain all these different types and what jump rings coordinate to them and then i also want to show you how to make a bracelet using them so we also have some good inspiration projects as well as showing the chain so this is really gorgeous chain I'm just gonna go quickly over each style here so you can see the options it's really unique so this one has these wonderful little colorful focus every four links and then these are wonderful little flat links what they do is they flash in the light which is so nice this one has a colorful little focal every single bead every single time I should say so that's fun for all those links and they come in a variety of colors as well so we've got turquoise we have like a deep red and a wonderful dark navy blue over here is this fun chain that it's like multiple bars with these little rondelle beads suspended between them and this is just fun to play with in touch that's what we're gonna use for our bracelet this one is very pretty that wonderful turquoise color and then this is a fun one this is a bunch of different bars with really colorful beads on them and you can just see how they're suspended so every direction looks really good with this chain let me quickly show you some inspiration ideas on how to use this chain I'm gonna show you how to cut it and what jump rings go with it so over here we've used that wonderful turquoise chain this is a project by our designer Kat she's actually done in two colorways so the only difference are these pieces here which are also by Zola elements but she's just used four little links on each side and she could easily made this design into a necklace as well just extending it on each side and all of this chain is sold by the foot here I've just used tiny little segments of that wonderful one with the rondelle's to make a pair of earrings I've done this in silver and gold and if you look up here you can see how we've added a jump ring to it so that's gonna be what I'm going to show you here in just a moment I'm going to skip over this because this is going to be our how-to project for the video and go right here where I just used six inches of chain on either side and we were able to create a really nice long necklace with this tassel focal so we used the red of the tassel to coordinate with the red beads okay let me show you how to cut this chain so I've got my cutters here there's just my normal pair of Zirin flush cutters whatever cutters you like so if you're looking at this chain it's got two types of Link's here so you see it's got the little flat link might be easier to pull up this one so it's got that little flat link and then it's got the colorful one either one can easily attach a jump ring to if you're going to cut off a link what you're going to want to do is cut in the middle then you can pull it off you can just pick it off usually or you can use a pair of chain nose pliers and what you're trying to do is just expose that loop and through that loop you can now put a 22-gauge jump ring I'm just gonna show for each style because it's important to know how to finish these chains because you're going to want to be incorporating them into your jewelry designs you're gonna be wanting it to add a clasp you're gonna want to you know add an element or embellishment and so a 22-gauge jump ring very easily fits through that end link so moving on to this next chain style over here again if you cut it and you for some reason want to cut it maybe you're making multiple links make sure you're only cutting one side so again you preserve an intact link now for this one you can actually have a larger jump ring so here is again a four millimeter jump ring but this one is a 20-gauge so this one with that little loop can easily accommodate a 20-gauge so of course a 22-gauge 21 gauge would also work for this one alright let's move on to this type of chain here so this one you can see sometimes you might get a length or have a it has the jump or the links I should say they look like jump rings but the links already exposed if that's the case you can just fit a 22-gauge jump ring through them like you see right here that's all we did it was we had those exposed links and we fit a 22-gauge jump ring through it now if you have it like this where you don't have those exposed links what you do is you grab the end of bar and you just cut it so you just want that little knob in the top side of your cutters cut and then pull out this part and now we've exposed links which have intact basically loops because they're complete links or soldered so now you can just thread a jump ring through them very easily and you can thread it through both of them if you like or maybe you're doing a design where you want one on each side but you would then just take your jump ring and put it through there and then of course you can put through the other one as well like you saw in this pair here this one's really self-explanatory pretty easy if you're going to cut it just cut that little thin link between the main focus and then this one here with all these little bars if you want to cut it again just go ahead grab basically one of those little balls with your cutters trim it off and then you can do as many as you want depending on how many links you want exposed so I'm going to do a couple here so now you see we have that Center core of a nice traditional type chain in there and that you can also use a 22 gauge jump ring for and that is what I did if you come over here and you look at this I exposed a couple of those links and I went ahead and added a 22 gauge jump ring to it and then for here I did some pearl knotting and attached a clam shell not cover to it so a lot of different options for this chain I just want to show you quickly how you would be able to cut it how to work with it so make your life a little bit because as such beautiful gorgeous chain we've been so excited to play with this over at beadaholique and one thing I want to show you now is how to make a bracelet so when I first saw this chain I was instantly inspired to pair it with these Nunn design ribbon slide and so these are like ribbon Corden's ribbon slide ends they were referred to by different names but basically they allow you to use them almost like a strand reducer we actually use them a lot in the loom work too this is the smallest size it's 17 millimeters then the medium size is 24 millimeters and the largest size is 33 point five millimeters and all of these work with all of these chains which is really fun probably the exception of this one but all of these chains over here and that's what I have here and they also come in different finishes so before I begin this project I want to show you how many links of this really cool chain right here with these little rondelle's will fit into them so this one you're gonna see in action but this one what you're going to do is you're just gonna take that end link and slide it in so I got two sliding them in one by one three and if you can imagine that we would close at four so for the medium-sized one which is the 24 millimeters you can fit four lengths of this really neat bar chain in there now let's look at the largest one and of course you can mix and match chain finishes and you can mix and match chain styles as well these are being held in here very nicely I'm gonna grab another little length of this chain I just had that was extra it is awful nice that you this is sold by the foot because it gives you a lot to play with so this one here will accommodate up to six strands of this really cool chain okay let's make our project now that we've we've tackled that because I thought that might be a question that some people had of what the other size is accommodated I've pre-cut six inches of each of these chains so it was one foot of each cut in half and then I'm going to use the 17 millimeter little slide ends I'm gonna use a lobster clasp I'm gonna use this little Zola Elements knowlike charm and then I'm going to use some Nunn design chain and what I like about this chain is the links are actually open so you can open and close them like a jump ring so they come closed but they are open links in that you they are not soldered and you can open them okay so to begin I am going to put the end of my chain slide it right down in and then I'm gonna grab this pretty chain in blue of course choose whatever color you like if you're doing this at home I'm gonna do two lengths of that and I put this chin in here because I found that three lengths of this exact chain was a little tight it was a little bit hard to close the end cap so I thought well what can I do to make a really interesting focal and so I thought well that that blue chain is so pretty alright so they're all just in there and take this and I'm gonna use my pliers to just start to bend it down and once it's almost all the way bent there we go flip it upside down and I'm going to press it on my table and you just use my my arm pressure so this is what we've got so far and they're staying in there they're not going anywhere so I'm going to make sure that they're not Criss crossing anywhere okay now I'm just gonna come here and pick these guys up and slide them in here as well I'm gonna go do the same thing on this side I find it easier if you do kind of prebend this with your chain nose versus trying to just use your force to do the whole thing I do find it does work easier here we go all right so this is how this is gonna look on my wrist just like so and now we're ready to finish it because we need to now add a clasp and so I want to have an adjustable clasp meaning you'll fit a lot of different people and it can be a different length so this is a little over six inches now because there's six inches of each of the chains and so let's do actually these are open a might as well not waste any just open up a couple for the lobster clasp side so just like a jump ring okay let's attach this let's do the lobster first and close it back up then we're gonna go to the other side this is going to go right there and then for the other side let's do let's do a couple inches let's do like two two and a half inches of course you can make this what does I keep wanting to cut it I keep forgetting I don't need to um you could do of course as long as you want so you can just have an inch or you can have a lot more okay open that up and on to this one let's place this pretty little charm okay one more step and our bracelet is done attach it to this end Oh sadhana and we are all done we have a really pretty zola elements chain bracelet that uses the Nunn design elements and you can see how that would look now me this would be a little bit big because I have particularly small wrists so but you can make it shorter of course just by cutting your chain shorter this is a quick and easy and a fun bracelet and I think it's something that everyone would love to even receive as a gift if you like making jewelry as gifts this is a great gift idea so I hope you enjoyed this video on how to cut the different soul elements chain so what size jump ring goes with them and then how to make this project with them all of the projects you see here are on the beadaholique website with full instructions a lot of them also have videos to accompany them or other information so please do check that out and keep checking back at beadaholique.com for other items by zola elements

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