How to Make Wire Jewelry Components for the Ambrosia Earring Set

	Wire Elements, Tarnish Resistant Gold Color Copper Wire, 26 Gauge 34 Yards (31 Meters) SKU: WNT-2633 $10.45
	Artistic Wire, Copper Craft Wire 20 Gauge Thick, Tarnish Resistant Brass (6 Yard Spool) SKU: WCR-2033 $4.59
	Eurotool Dual Utility Bench Block 3 x 3 Inches - Steel Anvil With Wood Base SKU: XTL-0264 $23.99
	Domed Wooden Dapping Shaping Forms in Assorted Sizes for Metal SKU: XTL-0259 $14.99
	Eurotool Hammer Rubber Mallet For Metal Smithing - 8 Ounces SKU: XTL-0247 $6.99
	The Beadsmith Jeweler's Chasing Hammer - 1 Inch Head - Metal Smithing SKU: XTL-2152 $13.99
	Wubbers Bail Making Jewelry Pliers - Small 2mm And 2.5mm Size SKU: XTL-0030 $31.99
	Wubbers Bail Making Jewelry Pliers - Medium 3mm & 5mm Size SKU: XTL-0031 $29.99
	Sharp Flush Cutter Pliers - For Cutting Beading Wire (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-5600 $23.99
	The Beadsmith Needle Files - Set Of 12 - Wire Wrapping! SKU: XTL-2212 $8.29
	Beadalon Large Beading Mats - Prevent Bead Rolling 13 X 18 Inch (Set of 2) SKU: XTL-9935 $6.75

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and today I'm gonna show you how to make custom wire jewelry components. I've done the necklace here and I'm not going to show you every component in the necklace but I can show you every component in the little earring here and you can then translate it to the necklace and basically be able to tell what we did to make the necklace and there are written instructions on Beadaholique.com for both these projects this one in the earring section called the Ambrosia earring this one in the necklace section called the Ambrosia necklace but for this video I want to show you how you can easily make some components using wire you'll need a variety of tools. I have got myself a ruler right here. Important as your doing this if you are making earrings or making the sides identical take notes as you're going as to the length of the wire you're cutting. It'll save you a lot of time later you need a bench block I have a couple hammers here and I have a chasing hammer and a rubber mallet have a couple of wooden dowels to make these nice curves if you don't have wooden dowels you can use markers, pill bottles, anything that's got nice round shape to it I've got a diamond file for my rough edges and then probably the most important tools for this particular project are bail making pliers and these come in a variety of sizes what's nice about them is unlike a round nose pliers where you see it's tapered and so you might have a smaller loop or a larger loop it's a little bit hard to tell these are the same diameter all the way through so they're going to give you a nice even uniform loops and then you need a pair of wire cutters as well You need wire. You can use all sorts of wire. For this particular project I used craft wire which is very inexpensive and it allows you to not worry too much if you make a mistake you can just throw it out and start on a new components. You could use the same techniques with precious metals as well so like I said I want to show you how to do the components in this little earring right here. I'm going to start with this bottom loop and what we did to make that is I need a three-inch piece of wire. I'm using twenty gauge wire for this particular project and that bottom loop I made a note that it was three inches long the wire that I started with. I'm just laying my wire up against the ruler and I'm just going to snip it at the three inch mark and then what I'd like to do is I'd like to make my loops first and for this project I'm using the smallest bail making pliers and the smallest nose on them. I'm going to make just very easily working my way around and I'm going to straighten the wire a little bit with my fingers if you have some nylon jaw pliers you can go ahead straighten it with that as well I'm going to be bending this wire in a moment so I'm not too worried about getting it perfectly straight I'm just gripping the wire between the two noses So that I almost made a mistake. If I bent it like this, going this way it would've been against the larger of the two noses and I want it to be the smaller one. Do make sure however you're going to bend it that you have the pliers lined up correctly. I'm just gripping it I want to make sure that See this one's pointing in this direction it's going up. I want make sure this one matches working my way around and bending it I have a little piece that looks like this now I'm going to take a dowel. This is about three quarters of an inch and I'm going to place it against the dowel. I'm holding it in the middle part I'm just going to make sure that these are parallel to the table going to pull them bend it around see they've met at top pull it off it is a little bit bent-up which is fine. You see I've got that nice curve in it take my rubber mallet flatten it a little bit so I got the right shape I want to show you in this particular earring I wanted them bent in a little bit more I'm just going to pinch them because it is wire, it's going to mold to whatever you want there I've got that shape now duplicated for an added finishing touch I'd like to hammer it a little bit so I'm just going to hammer the top I'm using a chasing hammer I'm going to do the other side as well you'll notice that these now pulled away a little bit. I need to take my bail making pliers and it's going to grab it twist it back in. Do that on both sides and then I want to add another little finishing touch. I'm going to hammer the base a little bit so this is work hardening the wire and adding a really nice touch to it So that component is now finished you'll see in this earring here that I wire wrapped the sides. That's really easy to do I've got some twenty-six gauge wire here I'm going to cut myself a length. I'm not to particular about how much I'm using here as long as I have enough to make the coils that I want that' all that really matters and you'll get a feel for that so I'm going to hold the wire between my index finger and my thumb I'm going to press it against the top area where I want to wind around and then make a loop and come back through the hole make another loop Squish them together. Have them nice and uniform Do as many as you like and then when you're done just go ahead snip off the wire end make sure that you snip it off in the same direction so that you have a distinct front and back I snipped that one on the side of my component. Make sure I snipped this on the same side you wanna make sure that that little edge lays flat if you do you have a little rough edge you could always take a diamond file to it sand it down just a little bit or you can also take a pair of chain nose pliers press that into the wire I got that on that side and I would just go ahead and do that on the other side if I was making this particular pair of earrings and I'd make it a little bit longer there is a trick if you going to be doing a lot of coiling like in this component right here that you see that I did on the necklace I wouldn't want to have to keep working and coming into the inside of this around and in and around what I would do is I would take a piece of wire This would be the wire that I started with. Pretend that I measured this three inches I would make my loops and assuming that I don't need to hammer anywhere I'm going to be coiling the wire as in this case were I hammered above I hammered below I didn't hammer where I was coiling the wire It goes a lot faster if you just take a piece of wire before you actually curve it around the dowel and you just wind it scoot it down and keep winding you actually sometimes get a much neater coil when you do it this way so there's that trim it off as normal make sure that you take care of that rough end if you have one and then what you can do even with the wire wrapped around it you can't bend it around the dowel with the wire already on it this is if we had a bigger piece and then you can just you're not going to need hammer the wire coil you can just go ahead make that nice finishing touch that's another way of doing it just depends upon your preference and how much you need to do and if that's how you want to do it that way remember wire does bend and make it work to your advantage so that is the first component in this little earring and now I'm going to show you how to do this middle component and then actually make the earring hook as well Now for the second component, the middle one I know that I need two inches of wire I'm going to work with my same twenty gauge wire line it up against the ruler snip for this one I'm going to do any wire wrapping make my little loop on each side Now for this particular project I'm making sure that the loops are facing in the same direction there will be instances where you'll want them to face the opposite direction such as when you do this chain link which I'll show you how in another video so I'm going to just flatten that out with my fingers and in this case I'm going to take another pair of bail making pliers. This one with a larger bail to it I'm going to put it in the center I'm eye balling it I'm going to bend both sides down at the same time and continue to eye ball it. Seeing if I need to make any adjustment. Looks like this side might be a little bit longer bend it a little bit more we just made a horse shoe and at this point I actually want to hammer this entire piece with my chasing hammer it's flat make sure that my loops are fully closed and with this one this component here you can see that the two sides cross over each other and I'm going to do that with my hands bend them closer and closer together until they criss-cross and pull We have that middle component you see that we're building that earring then this middle part is just on a head pin and then these are all connected with gold color jump rings all that's really left in the making of the components for this piece is the earring hook itself again I'm going to take the twenty gauge wire lay it down I need it to be a inch and a half for this component snip it to make my earring hook again I'm using the same size of the bail making pliers here going to make a coil and this is what we're gonna be able to attach our components together with this is our loop Now I'm going to make the tiniest little bend. So I'm gripping it right above the little loop we just made just an ever so slight bend because you'll see in this one we went ahead and we did a little wire wrapping up top so I want an area to be able to do that in Now that I'm going to again use the larger bail making pliers and I'm going to go ahead and just loop it around now make the little tip go up a little bit. Do that with my pliers and there we have an earring hook and that I do want to go ahead and work harden this as well and flatten it taking my chasing hammer I decided to flatten the entire hook and you wanna make sure you take a diamond file because the tip can be rough and just gently sand it down that's smooth so now we have all our components made for our earring and all that would be left is connecting them with jump rings making this little dangle with an head pin to connect these top two you would just open this bottom loop the same way you would open a jump ring or any other loop and connect it here to this middle component I want to briefly show you this necklace again and you'll see if you look closely this is all made up of little components which have been made individually and then either connected with jump rings or wire wrapped together It's the same thing where I used the bail making pliers to make these little coils and I used different sized dowels to wrap these around we have an instance where you have the smaller size on this medium size bail making plier used for one loop and the larger one used for another we've done three jump rings and then just more components connected with jump rings or wire wrapping and then a hand made chain and a hand made clasp as well and we'll show you how to do that in another video.