Adding Small Beads: a wire ring tutorial

1. Introduction: Welcome to this Wire Jewelry tutorial. Once you have finished watching the video, and if you created the ring, I would love to see your design. So please share that in the comments or in the project section. If you don't follow me already, you can find me across most social media platforms at Katie Rose Creates, and you can find me on Skillshare, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and the Threadsap. If you found this tutorial helpful, I would love to have you check out my other videos where you can find more wire jewelry tutorials. Thanks so much for watching, and now let's jump into creating this wire ring. 2. Adding Small Beads: Using wire to attach beads onto a ring is a fun way to add color to any design. We're going to create the band of the ring with 18 gauge solid brass wire. Then we will be using a 22 gauge wire to attach the beads onto the ring. I chose some black two millimeter seed beads for this ring. Then we will be needing a ruler as well as a file, and then a ring mandrel in the size of your choice, and I'm going with a size six. Then for our tools, we will be using Nylon jaw pliers. We need a pair of wire cutters, and then we will be using some round nose pliers, as well as the chain nose pliers. To begin creating the band of the ring, we're going to take the 18 gauge wire and run it through the Nylon jaw pliers, smoothing it and straightening it out. Then placing the wire onto the ruler, we're going to measure 2.5 ". This is about how much wire I need for a size six ring. Holding the wire at our 2.5 inch mark, we can then snip it off and move on to our round nose pliers, where we are going to begin creating a little loop at the end of the wire. Holding the wire in the very tip of the pliers, we're going to bring the end around to create a circle in the wire. You can make this loop larger or smaller if you would like, depending on where you place it into the jaw of the pliers. Once we have brought the wire all the way around, we're going to place the loop back onto the pliers and gently bend the long depth of wire so that it is centered underneath that loop. Then turning the wire over, we are going to create a matching loop on the other end of the wire. You can either bend the wire in the same direction as the first end or you can bend it in the opposite direction, which is what I did here. Also, when you are creating the second loop, make sure that you are wrapping the wire on the same plane as the first loop. That is to say, you don't want one loop being in a vertical position and the other being horizontal. Now that we have created loops on both ends of the wire, we're going to place it onto the ring mandril and shape the ring. Pressing the wire firmly onto the ring mandrel to create the shape. We can also grab a pair of pliers and using the handle to firmly press down that wire if it's a little difficult to use our fingers. This might be a little unconventional, but I find that using the handle of a pair of pliers works very well, especially for pressing down the ends of wire. Because of the nature of wire, we can see that it springs back a little bit even after we have pressed it on the ring mandrel. To work past this, we have to over bend the wire, so we have to push it past the point to which it naturally springs back to so that when it does spring back, it will be in the position that we want it to be. Now when we place it back on the ring mandrel it fits correctly. With it on the ring mandrel, I can see that both loops are turned up a little bit. So I'm going to use the chain of pliers in placing one loop and then the other into the pliers. I'm going to gently bend the wire so that those loops are more flat towards the base of the ring. With the band complete, we can now begin attaching the beats. Using our Nylon jaw players again, we're going to smooth out a stretch of the 22 gauge wire. Then we are going to string all of the beads onto the wire. For the ring that I'm making, I decided to do enough beads that would cover about the top third of the ring. With this method of attaching beads onto a ring, I don't think you would want to go over a third's worth of the ring because the beads would begin to start slipping over the side of the ring, but you could definitely do less beads. If you would want to add more beads, I have other videos that show more methods on how to attach beads. Now to attach the beads onto the ring, I want to make sure that my beads are sitting across the top of the ring. I'm going to bring them up to the end of the wire and then bending the wire so that it fits across the ring, how it will be at the end. I'm going to measure that, find that spot to where I want it to be sitting, and then holding the wire onto the band of the ring will then wrap it tightly around the band of the ring. We can measure this spot again after we first attach the wire on because the wire will be able to slide a little bit back and forth on the band of the ring until we have tightened it down securely. Don't stress out if the wire feels like it's moving way too much on the band of the ring. Once we have finished creating that wrap, we'll be able to move it a little bit before we tighten it down to secure it in place. Using your fingers or pair of pliers to wrap that wire around as many or as few times as you would like. I went around about three times before grabbing the wire cutters and snipping off any excess wire. Now using the chain news pliers, we can tighten down that wrap and secure it onto the band of the ring. With one end attached, we are going to bring the beads back up to the top of the ring and curve that 22 age wire to match the curve of the ring, and then bringing the long end of the wire down around through the band of the ring, we will then securely wrap it until we have as many wraps on this end as we do on the first so that both ends of the wire are matching. When the wire wrapping matches, we will take the wire cutters and cut off the extra wire. Once we've done that, we will then take the chain of pliers and tighten down this wrap as we did with the first one. As I mentioned, that wire may want to slide back and forth on the ring. So we will use our chain nose pliers to go back over those wraps to make sure that they are tight and secure and the beads can no longer slide back and forth. The beads will naturally want to follow the curve of the wire. So using our fingers, we will bend those beads so that they are straight over the top of the ring. Then using the file, we will go back and check those wrappings to make sure that everything is smooth and there are no sharp edges. When we are satisfied that everything is smoothed down, we have now finished the ring. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time. 3. Outtro: Katrina here to say thank you again for watching my video. If you would do me a favor, it would be super helpful if you left a review and comments, letting me know how this video went for you, ways that I might be able to improve these videos for you, as well as ideas on what you might like to see next. If you want to see more wire jewelry tutorials, be sure to go check out the rest of the videos on my page. That's it for now. I'll catch you next time.