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 the wire wrapped components for the Blarney earrings using a wig jig this is the finished earring, so I'm gonna make another one just like this and I'm using the wig jig centaur it has the half round and then the square grid I'm using artistic wire. I have this nice christmas emerald green in twenty-four gauge and I have non tarnish brass in twenty gauge and then I'm also using the Miyuki delica cube beads and I have this pretty silver lined emerald color and that's all I'm going to use to make these I'm going to make the dangles and earring hook out of non tarnish wire as well the tools you're going to need other than your wig jig are flush cutters nylon jaw pliers, round nose pliers, regular chain nose pliers Wubber's bail making pliers and then I'm going to use these wire looping pliers for my loops here, you can also just do it with chain nose or round nose pliers and then you're going to need a cup burr and this is to smooth the part of the earring hook that goes in your your ear so the first thing to do is going to be coil this green wire around the brass wire and there are a lot of really handy tools for wire coiling but they don't coil the wire thin enough to fit over twenty gauge wire so this I actually just adjust it by hand It's kind of tedious but it doesn't take that long so cut yourself a piece of the green wire probably about eighteen inches long just get a scrap of the brass wire about six inches long I'm not going to use this piece again cut your wire with the flush side towards your piece you're going to have this in your hands a lot and you want that to not be sharp as I learned the hard way not being smart about it you want to straighten it out but it doesn't need to be perfect just no big kinky bends in it then we're going to several inches from the end here just bend the end up and back down to give yourself something to hold onto take this piece here of the green wire put it between then bend it around just getting it fastened and it doesn't need to be perfect by any means just so that when you twist it will holds still and it'll twist around now all I did is turn the bent part and use your fingers to guide the wire into a nice tight coil you just keep going all the way down, you need two inches so you can do two inches worth of that and don't measure where it's loose measure two inches where it's nice and tight the whole way keep going until you have two inches and then cut that off and trim the end so that it's not sharp and I have a two-inch here that I did before put that aside now I'm going to use the wig jig to make this central drop shaped piece go ahead and cut about a foot of the brass wire straighten it out I always like to start with a loop so hold on to and use the nylon pliers to straighten them out and then just go ahead and trim off the little handle now we're going to make this teardrop shape that's the base for the earring we're going to start with the bottom, so I have on the centaur jig I've placed five pegs in the forth set the in of holes there so I have skipped two holes between each and I just went all the way the half round give yourself a few inches above here and take this up into this section here and you need a few inches to wrap it go ahead and start on the left side and wrap the wire around the peg then continue around the half circle wrap around all the way and continue and as you work with this finger your going to shape your wire but also hold it down nice and close to the base of the wig jig wrap and you could flip this over so that your work starts at the top and works down it balances out, it doesn't have an awkward shape to it, layering them all on top that works out and around that fifth spot and then bring your wire over into these three up here just like that, they should cross over just before this top peg which is the very last peg in the center and then I have a peg skipping one to each diagonal right now I'm going to go ahead and pull our work up be careful that you keep the pegs on the jig tighten those loops down flat with your nylon jaw pliers then you're going to trim your wires so that they're about the same length, you do need about four inches to either side now take are our coil wire measure an inch it should be an halfway mark I've just got my thumbnail in there, you can keep yourself in the right spot however is best for you bend the coil right at the halfway point if you wanna grab your pliers and get them in there. You don't want to cut them just put your thumbnail in there in back and bend it'll separate once you have enough room you can get your chain nose pliers in the middle there and keep the coils nice and tight to either side of the bend you don't want it to open like a slinky. You want it to be a coil and then a bend and a braid and a coil now we're gonna get this piece onto this slide one side right on there you can coax it out the opening where you have the bend and once you have it out of there, it's easier to make the rest of the bend a little sharper then we're going to very slightly bend this piece to get it to go in the other side we can bend it back when we're done I want to make sure that the piece where it's been working up every time it wraps lays on top and get that to go through that last coil on the other way be careful as usual you nudge your coils that they aren't loosening so once you work your wires both through here it can be a little tricky. Just be gentle. You don't want to bend the coils out of shape it'll just make it harder if you do move the coils down straighten out the ends If they'll all bent up like they probably did but put the shape back onto the jig if it got a little bent up you can reshape it go ahead and pull the coils down if they don't quite sit evenly you can always kind of pull down on the coil and spread it just slightly we're going to have it sit pretty much all the way down against that first loop hold the left one with your fingers kind of at a straight line across gently wrap the right wire around the peg and don't pull it into a tight circle, leave it as a teardrop shape then wrap it in a loop around the last peg here and repeat with the left if you do the left one first it's gonna sit more evenly flat but we can switch them around though and in a nice loop take your nylon jaw pliers and push it flat and pull that up off the pegs if the pegs fly out just put them back just gently flip-flop those and put the left one behind it now use flush cutters to trim those loops you want the flush side against the end of the wire that's going to stay on the piece it can be a little tricky to get in the back loop go from the front be careful. Wear safety goggles or hold the end of the wire because they will fly go in with your nylon jaw pliers get these to lay flat they do kind of sit on top of each other so it is a little tricky if they bend out of place don't worry about it, you can fix them after you can kind of just use your hands to adjust them and get them all in a nice happy place the earring hook will hold them in place I'm happy with that this isn't looking as long as this side if you don't just gently spread that coil a little bit you can even that right up I'm going to go in here with my chain nose pliers and just bend these a little bit so that line up be careful with the regular chain nose because it will scratch the finish off the artistic wire just you really gentle they're a little bit more precise but just be gentle when you need to use them we've got all the loops all lined up now I'm going to make the dangles cut about eight or ten inches of wire and straighten it out now here I'm going to use these wire looping pliers, if you prefer to use regular round nose and chain nose pliers to make the loops you can definitely do that too I'm going to about a quarter of an inch down use my wire looping pliers to make a nice uniform loop bend up you can use your nose pliers to tighten that up if it's loose place Miyuki cube beads on the wire hold that loop and make the other loop perpendicular so that it sit not the same flat because I want that loop to show round when they are hanging give yourself just a little bit of room above the bead and make another loop at the top trim that off and then you're going to need four more of those cut yourself a new flush end repeat that you can do all ten for both pairs at once do five to show you for the one earring try to keep your wire at about the same point on the plier so that your loops stay close to size and now the last loop on each of these is still slightly open when you made it, pull it open and hand the dangle from the loop. Close it up do this with all five you can also just use head pins if you prefer for this I'd like having the loop on the end because it brings that round loop look from the top of the structure and the loops here into the bottom so you can choose what you prefer the only thing left to do it is to make the earring hook it's actually pretty easy to do, just need about six inches of wire take my Wubber's I want it to be similar in size as the other so pay attention to that one take about an inch from the end and just pull the ends together It's going to match that spot right there you need to put a round bend in this piece, go ahead and grab that with your round nose pliers just bend the end around to meet trim that piece off straighten that up and then at the bottom here measure it. I'm just going to take chain nose pliers and kick that piece out so it's got a slight bend trim that end flush about an eighth of an inch and trim the end and I'm going to use cup burr and a pin vise here and this got a little fine grit kind of abrasive inside the cup and it's rounded, it's very hard to see because it's so tiny use the cup burr that fits your wire you're gonna stick the end of your cut wire into that tiny little cup and twist fast it's going to file off the rough edges and make that a nice clean, smooth, rounded piece that's gonna make it safe for putting it in your ear without cutting you up like I did my finger it is sharp, so you always want to do this before you use for an earring do it a few times, you might even see a little bit of the metal dust until it feels nice and smooth then just open the loop up bring it through both of the center loops close it backup and that's how you make the Blarney earrings using a Wig Jig. 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