How to Make a Wire Wrapped Frame

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Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi. This is Julie from Beadaholique.com Today I'm going to show you how to make a wire form which you can then wire wrap with beads. These are great for hearings or pendants. What you're going to need for this project is you're going to need some wire, sixteen to eighteen gauge. Eighteen gauge is gonna be a little bit easier to work so I prefer eighteen. You need a dowel or mandrel to shape your wire around. This is about one inch thick. If you don't have a dowel or a mandrel you can use something like a paint bottle or a glue bottle. Don't use the squishy part. Go ahead and use the lid, something that is firm. Basically you're looking for anything that just has a nice solid round shape to it. A pill bottle will work well as well. You need a pair of flush cutter, a pair of flat nose pliers and a pair of round nose pliers. So here is here's a sample of what we're going to be making and here's one that I already restarted to bead. So you can see it holds it's shape really well and it's a nice foundation. So to begin go ahead and cut yourself some wire. Now the amount of wire you need is gonna be based upon the size of that round shape you're going to be making. So for this one, which is about one inch, I'd like to cut about eight inches of wire. Always cut a little bit more than you think you're going to need. It's better to have a little bit extra than too little. I'm just going to try to straighten the wire out a little bit with my fingers. These kinks are going to work themselves out anyways when I shape it. So now taking my dowel I'm going to find the midpoint approximately in my wire. I'm going to hold it with my thumb and now I'm going to curve the wire around the the form. I'm going to pull it all the way around so that the wires cross. Now I what I want to do at this point is I wanna take my chain nose pliers. I'm going to bend this back a little bit and then I'm going to produce a kink so that my wire is now standing upright. You can see what that looks like it when I take it off the form. Put it back on the form. I want to find the area where these two wires are going to meet and I'm going to do another kink. So I want both of my wires to be sticking straight up. Now I'm going to see which one is longer because I just guesstimated. I didn't measure. So that's fine. I'm going to take this off of the form and on the shorter one I'm going to cut it down so it's about one fourth inch long. I'm going to line this up and where that space is where the two meet I'm going to put my pliers and now I'm going to create a bend. This is what we've got so far. Take my round nose pliers. Put them right into that corner right where they kind of grab. They can't go anywhere else and now I'm decide about how big of a loop I want. If I want a smaller loop I'd go towards the tip of the round nose pliers. If I want a larger loop I'll go further back. Take this holding it twist it around. Twist it all the way around. Pull out my pliers, Put them in the top part now so I've got a good grip. I'm going to work this totally around here still holding to a curve. Now what I'm going to want to try to do and this is going to be hardest part of the entire project, I want to try to capture the short end in my wrappings so that I want it to be lined up right like that behind the other end and I want to capture and wrap around it to secure it. This is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of getting used to. You sometimes have to bend your circle in a little bit to try and capture it. You always want to just keep a firm grip on your round nose pliers. Just keep wrapping around till you get to the base. Pull your pliers out. Take your flush cutters and snip that end. Now if it's a little bit rough go ahead and push that wire in. My shape is a little bit distorted so I'm just gonna go ahead and have put it back onto my dowel. Shape it. Pull it back off. If this looks like it may be tilting a little bit to the side pull it straight. Keep shaping it on your dowel. There you go. Now I have actually a set that I can make a pair of earring out of I hope you've enjoyed this technique for creating quick and easy wire forms. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!