Audio Transcript
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HI this is Megan with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you how to make a Wire Wrapped Feather Headband I'm going to be using some eighteen gauge square silver plated wire You want to make sure that your wire is nice and square with definite corners to it so that when you twist it you get this really pretty ornate look to it You're going to be using some twenty gauge half round wire. The half round is half a circle basically has a rounded side and a flat side and it allows the wire to sit flat against what you're working on You need a blank Headband I'm using silver plated wire with the black Headband because I have black hair and so for me when I wear this it makes the feather look like it's floating off of the Headband. It's pretty cool but you can choose different finishes for your headband and for your wire depending on your preferences and then you also need some tools need a chain nose plier, a nylon chain nose plier, a round nose plier, some flush cutters and then you're gonna need one of these. This is called pin vise. This is what you use to twist the wire. so the first thing we're going to do is cut the lengths of square wire that used to form the feather shape I just cut three pieces that are about twelve inches and then I'm cutting three pieces that are about ten inches it's not an exact science. You're going to end up trimming down a little bit from what you have on there when you're done so take all of your pieces of the square wire and when you cut them the first thing you want to do is use your nylon jaw pliers and run the wire through them to straighten it out it can get really bent up. That's not the best way to deal with it then we're gonna fold the pieces in half. You can see I have the other ones folded in half it takes a little while so I didn't want to make you watch me do it I'll show you how to do it with one. Go ahead and grab piece about half way using the chain nose plier and then just squish it towards you it's not exactly halfway, it's not the end of the world and the square wire, you wanna make sure that it's not twisted when you start, you wanna make sure that it's nice and flat when you start when you're working with wire if you want to avoid marking up and scratching up your wire you can use nylon jaw pliers I don't find that they gave quite as strong of a grip so you have to decide if it's more important to get a grip on it or if it's more important to keep it from being scratched this part here you can see these are marked up it's gonna get covered mostly right here with other wire I just go ahead and use the chain nose pliers once you have it flattened out put it between the jaws of the chain nose hold it down and squish it try not to pinch your fingers in there too badly get it flattened out this is why I didn't make you watch me do all of them. It takes a little while you wanna get it all the way flat because this is going to be all bundled together, you can hold it still too with another pair of pliers if it's moving around a lot and then you're gonna take your pliers and try to straighten out that bend so it's not all crooked you're gonna hold on with one pair of pliers and use your nylon pliers to straighten it out the end. Once you get this part straightened you can just hold it with your fingers and again you're gonna have all six folded pieces bundled up together so you need these to be nice and straight that they'll sit together in a little square rectangle so you take your longer pieces and line them up right next to each other and then you're gonna take the shorter pieces and put them on top It can be a little challenging to hold them all together at once Once you get them relatively bundled up in a little two by three rectangle and you're gonna grab you're half round wire and start wrapping them up For this I did not cut a length of the half round. I'm working straight from the little bundles that it comes in because I'm not sure exactly how I need as I wrap around so make sure you have a fair amount they starting to work with or else you might need to open up a new package also make sure that it's not tangled up that it's going to come off the spool pretty freely If it's really tangled up you the wanna make sure that it's a little bit more free first and then you take you're square wires you're going to wrap with the flat side of your half round against the bundle of square wires we're going to wrap around flip it over make sure you don't lose your wires you're going to take the tail end and bend it down so that that can sit up underneath that it doesn't move around you want to start near the bottom make sure that you're getting all of the ends, don't go all the way to the bottom it will fly right off and I'm gonna go back over that second spot the second loop that was there first to kind hold in place it's okay if it makes kind of a bump there flatten that out get these wrapped if it is too bumpy just go ahead and push it down and once you have these wrapped a little bit then we're going to go ahead and wrap them right onto the side of the Headband to hold it in place Grab the Headband and continue to wrap around make sure you don't get tangled up on the other sides It can takes some practice to be able to get a nice neat wrap you can also go back and flatten it out and make it look a little bit neater you want to go ahead and wrap about three quarters of an inch from the bottom so you have a nice solid foundation. It's gonna hold them in place and it's gonna hold it firmly on the Headband without moving around wrap a little more okay once you have everything in place, just going to tighten it up now it's time to start moving the wires over to the sides what I'm going to be doing is taking the top row first, the top layer beading the wire to the outside and I want it to have this stepped kind of look, so I'm going to bend one out, wrap around, bend one on the other side wrap around it's kind of reform so you can just go it in the order and frequency that you like start bend that edge there and I'm going to bend one out. Make sure when you pull on that that you we're pulling it free of the wire at the bottom and as I start to wrap these I'm gonna get more space between my wraps and you can do two with once around, you can do one either end or you can wrap around it again and wait until the next loop to point out there all that's gonna determine how long it is between the start and end of your feather-like between here and here again it's kind of free form You two on the next one just make sure you keep the flat side of your wire down when you're wrapping it keeps the surface nice and flush against the square wire and do the top layer first then you can move onto the bottom wire as you work you wanna bend the wires that are going against headband into a gentle curve also keep going until you have one left that's flushed to the headband and wrap around it once or twice to secure it and then you're gonna cut a couple of inches further than the last piece bring it around to the front and then you just pull this away from the headband and then wrap it around and keep the flat side of the half round against the square wire this will keep it nice and snug wrapping it a lot of times close together at the end just we did at the beginning when you get to the end use chain nose pliers or nylon jaw pliers to make sure that the wire are wrapped flat and not with the sharp end sticking out so take the sharp side all the way on theback alright so this does not look very pretty at this point, it doesn't look very much like that next we're going to trim these down and you can go with kind of a fan shape and it's okay if on one side is a little longer I have this side being a little bit shorter and this side thing being longer. I have them kind of go in that direction we'll go that way on this one I have this side be a little shorter since I have some short ones in there and I'm just gonna kind of fan down that way so that it's a gradual you want to use the flat side of your flush cutters it leaves you a nice blunt edge here and then I'm going to continue that kind of shape on this side but a little bit longer okay now I'm going to twists the wires open the pin vise onto a sizes that will fit. If you unscrew this all the way you can flip these around to get a bigger size too I know that the size here fits just fine all you do is unscrew that a little bit insert just the very tip. You only want to insert up to maybe up to a quarter of an inch but between an eighth and an quarter of an inch and then screw it and then you hold onto the base rotate the pin vise get it nice and twisted up unscrew and go to the next one and go ahead and do that with all of the edges here so once you have your whole ray of wires nice and twisted up then we're going to use round nose pliers to give them the looped around kind of a look take your shorter side and on the shorter side I'm going to have them all the down and on a longer side I'm going to have just the bottom line one looped down and the rest loop forward take the very end of the wire and your round nose pliers bend it around until it meets. That's going to keep it from being sharp too. If you make sure it's touching and I'm going to keep doing that all the way around this last one I'm going to loop the other way so that it faces down and I'm going to take chain nose pliers again you can use nylon jaw pliers for this if you wanna make sure not to scratch up the wire I think it's worth it to get a better grip on the pliers take that loop and hold it down really tight at the base and then bend the wire around nice bend at the end I just used a pair of round nose pliers they help you from getting a hard corner when you do this you can also use your fingers to give a nice bend bend the wires again this is kind of a free-form project you want to just bend it the way you like it see what you think looks good once you get them going you can get them all bent over to that side and your top one should keep nice and tall. It's good to have one that kind of stands up the other ones you can kind of play with curling them more the last one I'm going to curl really far play with it until you like the way that it works on this side I'm going to curl the bottom one down some similar to the bottom one and get it more curled up but leave it taller and then the look that I'm going for over here is where it swoops back to follow that curve so I'm gonna actually bend it forward a little and then back a little just with my fingers I feel like it makes it look a little bit more feather like just continue until you'd like the end result and then when you like the shape that you have go ahead and bend them a little bit to go with the curve of the headband bend them down a little so that they don't stick up flat if you bend them too much it's going to go right into your hair and disappear, so just play with it get it at a level that you like you can go back and neaten up you're bottom push the wires up and into place tighten them down to make them nice and flat and you can keep playing with that and then until you find the look that you like That's How to Make a Wire Wrapped Feather Headband
