Complete Guide To Making Wire Jewellery

I'm going to show you how to make wire jewelry. To start, you will need some beads; the beads can be any size. Here, I have a few different colors of beads, I have some big beads, and here are some very small beads. I also have a roll of wire. You will need lots of wire. This is .8 of a mm wire, I have some head pins which are long 50 mm headpins soft, I have 4 sets of pliers, round nose pliers, needle nose pliers, side cutters, flat nose pliers. So, we are going to make these S links. To start, I will cut my wire 4 mm in length, use a little steel ruler to measure 4 mm. With these lengths, as they will be linked onto a necklace, it is important to file the ends flat. When you use the side cutters to cut the wire, you will end up with a point which is quite sharp. To file the ends flat, use a little needle file and hold the wire quite firmly in your hand, push forward pressing quite firmly against the end of the wire. It will probably take 4 or 5 strokes to get the ends flat. If you are making an entire necklace, you can pre-cut all your wires and file all your ends so you have all your pieces ready. Using your round nose pliers, you hold the wire key in the pliers. Using your thumb, press the wire around the nose of the pliers, so you have a shape like that. Then you do the same to the other side. Then, you have a link. You can do several of these links, and then you link them together. The next step I will show you is how to do an eye pin. It's probably best if you start with a length of wire instead of cutting your wire short, so to begin with, again, I'm going to file the end of the wire. To make an eye pin, you hold the wire at the very end, a few mm down from the tip of the pliers, use your thumb to press the wire firmly around, so you end up with a shape like that. You need to turn the shape out, you place the pliers back inside the loop, use your finger to press the wire against the nose of the pliers. This actually takes a little bit of practice, it's best to practice first; you should not start with silver wire, start with silver plated wire or copper wire to practice. Once you have a hang of the technique, you can move onto silver wire. I'm going to thread in a little black bead, then a blue and black bead, then a little black bead. I've threaded a little black bead onto my wire, then I'm going to thread in a bigger bead. You need very good light when you do this so you can see the holes of the beads. Now, I'm going to cut about 8 mm of wire or leave 8mm above my bead. You can do this by eye or if you prefer, you can measure it cut, about that much of wire. To avoid beads flying across the room or a length of wire, hold the bead and hold the wire, then you'll need to file this to take down that sharp edge. Now, use the round nose pliers. When making the second eye pin, you want to do it in the same direction as the first one you made. A good tip is once you've made a few of these and get a hang of what you're doing and you might want to mark your pliers, so that every time you make your little loop, it's in the same part of the pliers, so your loops are the same size. This will make your bracelet look very neat. Again, I pull the wire to the very end using my finger to push the wire around the nose of the pliers, and I've ended up with that shape. Turn the shape to loop back into the eye pin. I position one nose of the pliers inside the loop, and the other one sits on the outside, then just turn it back so it almost looks like a question mark. I have 2 of these beads made into an eye pin and I have 2 links. You can make several of these beads and several of the links to make a very long necklace or a very short necklace. To link them together, I use flat nose pliers to open the link, ensuring not to destroy the shape, so I open them sideways. Thread into link and close it. When you're closing it, you need to be sure you don't have a gap; if you have a gap, your necklace will fall apart. So I'm going to thread in the other bead like that. Again, I'm closing the gap. To close the gap, you use the flat nose pliers and push it against the middle of the link. And there you have the start of a chain. That's how you make wire jewelry.