Transcripts
1. Introduction And Class Project: I I'm terrifically. I'm an artist and art instructor living in the wilds of the I've been creating art for the past 20 years. Most recently, I've been doing acrylic painting. Glass, printmaking and resin are but what I've been doing the longest is making my own handmade jewelry. I'm not a metal smith, so I don't forge my own components by hand. But I do make use of all of the findings and accessories that are available for purchase in your local craft store in order to create stylist jewelry from hand. One of the most important things that I think you can learn as a beginning jewelry maker is how to make a wire wrap loop. Here. You can see my large example loop on a big piece of wire. The's wire rap groups are so tiny when you make them in jewelry applications that I need a large visual aids. You can see what I'm talking about. Once you've learned how to make these wire wrap loops, you're gonna be able to make a number of different kinds of jewelry for our class project. We're going to make some earrings after we've practiced making the loop on a number of different beads. You can use these beads to make any number of gifts for your family or accessories for yourself. You only need three tools for this class, and I'm gonna go into much more detail about the tools and the supplies you'll need in a series of videos where I not only tell you what you need, but why you need it. So join me in this class. Learn how to make wire wrapped loops on head pins so that you could make components like this and start building your jewelry making skills. Let's get started.
2. Jewelry Tools- My Top 3 plus a Bonus Tool: Thanks, Class. You're going to need three tools. At a minimum, you cannot make neat wire wrapped loops. This is just a ridiculously large one. Without round nose pliers. Round nose pliers are just that. The nose is round. Each jaw is is round and conical, and that conical shape allows you to control the size of your loop. If you make a loop way up here, it can be teeny tiny. And if you make a loop way down here, the inside off that loop will be much larger, so you must have round nose pliers. To do this project, you need some kind of wire cutters, preferably flush cutters. But if you can't get flush cutters, regular wire cutters will suffice, and then you will need chain nose pliers. You can see this is smooth. There's no there are no teeth there like there are on hardware store pliers. You need that smoothness, because if you have cheese like on the's, it's gonna chew your wire up. These tools hardware store tools are meant to grip and to do work. Jewelry making tools are mostly meant to hold the peace and to form the shape of the peace We want the jaw to be smooth. Che knows players come in a variety of different sizes. The difference here being on Lee the the size of the handles. But you can also find them quite wide, like these or in a bent format. The bent format is great to have the wide is fine. But if I had to choose between the wide and the bent, I would pick the Bent. Having both bent and chain knows are great. You can buy these tools in a kit. And what I really like is a nice large handle. You're gonna find sets that are cheaper that have little tiny we handles there about 1/3 of the size of these handles. And if you have little tiny, we hands, maybe that'll be okay for you. But I need a larger handle. If I'm going to be making a lot of jewelry so that my hands can be comfortable in the next video, I'm going to show you the findings that will need for this class
3. Just What Are 'Findings' Anyway?: unless you're a metal Smith to make jewelry, you're gonna need some findings. And findings are to jewelry making what notions are too, selling their the little accessories that are made to make it easier for you to make what you're going to make the project for this class. We're going to make some earrings with all the little looped beats that we end up makings. We're gonna make thes loops you see that are attached to the bead that go on to this circle that attach it to the ear wire. So let's talk about all the findings for the earrings, you'll need some type of your wire. This is sometimes called a fishhook type of your wire and ensure that you have also seen this type of your wire that has a loop at the bottom, a little ball and a little spring. Either one is totally fine, and you'll want to get those in whatever metal you need, whether you're gonna do gold or silver, whatever works for you. And so you just assume as you move through this that whatever supply I'm showing you, if you're working in gold, you're gonna get it in gold. But This is a head pin, and it's a two inch hatpin. One side has a little flat head on it, just like a sewing pin, and then the other side is cut straight. There's no point there, and head pins are what hold the little beads in this hearing you can see here, there's the head of the pen and it passes through the bead, and we make the loop out of the the wire of the pen. The head pin had pens. You can get in bulk, and I suggest you do that. If you want Teoh get good at if you want to really practice there. 216 pieces in this set and it's great for what I'm going to have you do in order to learn why Rap loops you're gonna need a lot. The two inch size is best three inches better if you can get it, but you often can't. Don't go any smaller than two inch. It'll be too small for you to learn on now. The option that I prefer is a ball pin and all a ball pin is it's a head pin that instead of having a flat end it has a circular ball, and I just think that ball pins look nicer. See how that ball on the bottom of this loop that I have this little turquoise bead on just looks to me. It looks nicer, all right, so if we want to compare the way these look, there's nothing wrong with head pins. But I just prefer ball pins. And as I'm teaching this class, you can assume that if I say head pin and I'm using a ball pen, it's an interchangeable term, really. But you should know the difference for when you're going to buy your products. And I got both my ball pins and my head pens raided. Michael's coming up in the next video, we're going toe. Learn how to choose beads so that we can get started practicing our wire wrapped loops, making a pair of earrings. I'll see you in the next video
4. Beads - What to Consider When Choosing Your Beads: beads. There's such a huge variety of beads available, and the quality is better than it has ever been. So if you can only get to Michael's because you don't have a local bead store, fine. But your local beat star is gonna have the best selection by far, and you'll be able to get things that you can't get at Michael's. My local beat store is Caribbean Feeds in Portland, Maine. And as you can see, I can get some beautiful fire polish Czech beads, which is glass. These air opaque glass for $2.50 for a short strand. So how many beads does a short strand have on it? That's gonna depend, uh, the size of the beads. This is about 25 deeds and the size of thes feeds. Five millimeter fire polishes the finish that's on the bead. You can see that these air faceted, which means that they have the little cuts. Gemstones such as trick ways. Lapidus. I'm of two minds about these. I have a great number of them because I love them, but there's a person somewhere, and they're drilling holes in these bees, and often the the dust can be toxic, and it's not an ideal situation. So a very appropriate substitute for, say, a turquoise bead or any opaque gemstone. It's gonna be a check glass speed and the Picasso finish is the finish. That, to me most makes it look like actual stone. This is glass, so the other consideration is going to be the whole size of the bead. So how big is the hole that goes through it? For the most part, most beads are going. Teoh fit just fine on ahead. Pin a standard had pen or ball pen, and that had or ball holds the bead on on one side so that it can hang and fall off. But there are some beads, such as thes ceramic beads that have, ah, larger hole and your head pin might go right through in this case polls right through. So that is going to be too big of a hole size. Most beads hanging on a strand at Michael's or your local craft store are gonna have the right size hole for you to use, never gonna make jewelry from this strand as it comes from the store. This is a temporary arrangement, and It's not meant for you to use this to make something using the fishing line. You're gonna practice your wire loop making skills on many, many, many, many, many beads I suggest sitting down for no. If your favorite show. I sometimes use a cookie sheet from the dollar store that has edges on the side and you're in a sit down here because many of these as possible And the goal here is to master the skill and you're gonna be doing the single loop. So one end is a loop in the other end is gonna be here, a pin or your ball. You can make a lot of gifts for your family with these many, many little wire wrap looped beads that you're gonna end up making of simplest of which is an earring or necklace and what you take a large jump ring. This is a 10 millimeter jump, a ring, and you just thread them on there. This could be this isn't hearing, but it could easily have another little jumping up here at the top and a chain could go through it and it could be a pendant. Imagine if you had different birthstones you could make like a mother's necklace for someone out of just different semiprecious gems or glass beads. So the first part of your project is going to be making as many of these little guys as you can until you become comfortable with the process of making this wire wrapped loop. So go ahead and watch the next video in which I'm going to introduce to you the wire wrapped blue. This is a single piece of wire that curves around and then wraps around itself two times. All right, I'll see you in the next video. One will learn to make the wire wrapped loop.
5. The Nitty Gritty of Wire-Wrapped Loops: This is the hardest thing for me to teach. And my students sometimes struggle with this, and so I'm always gonna start out with a great big, soft wire in order for you to be able to see what I'm doing. This is just some aluminum flora wire that I got for a dollar at the dollar store, and this is a great way for you to get the concept of the loop and understand it. So if you're practicing this on some Kraft wire, cut off a goodly amount, I probably got about five inches here and at first what we want to understand its structure and shape of the loop. So if I was doing this with a head pin, my bead would already be on it and the the ball or the head would be holding it on down here, and I would be working above it. But when we our starting with just a wire that doesn't have anything on either end, which is how we would be working for the necklace, we're gonna have to just imagine where does the bead go. So maybe our beat is gonna go there. And so the very first thing we're gonna do, and I'm gonna do this with my ground nose. Plier The round those Kleier is not used to move the wire. A round nose plier is used as a mold or a Mandrell to make the loop perfectly round. So I'm gonna hold my my wire wherever on the jaws that I want the size of the loop to be. And because I'm not ever gonna put beat on here and because I want you to be able to see it , I'm gonna work way down here. But if you were working with a smaller piece of wire, usually I work around in this area and some people will draw a line on there tool in a Sharpie. So they always make their loops. The identical size gonna hold this, and I'm going to just press away from me now I have or great angle. And this area right here is this right angle. So now I'm gonna take this wire and this way, making this circle here. Okay. Now, to do that, I would normally use my round nose pliers when I made this angle. Now don't contort yourself in the way that I'm contorting myself. I'm doing this so you can see the relationship between the tool and the wire. But you're gonna hold this in a way that's comfortable for you, okay? And you're gonna hold it in your dominant hand. You've got a nice firm grip. So once you've made that right angle, we're gonna let loose if the choir and we're gonna turn the plier so that the bottom jaw rests right inside that right angle that you made and the top jaw is sitting on the top of it was. Now I'm gonna pull this wire toward me right over the top of the jaw. And then when I get it across and it's touching the jaw with that, then I'm going to stop. Most people make the mistake of trying to continue around, and I think I'll actually show you what that looks like because it's a very common mistake . Here's my break angle. I moved my tool so that, uh, jaws are up and down and coming around and then watch. Watch this. You get it focused. This is wrong. Can you see now Why That would be First of all, I did touch them. Swear per of my flyer, but just you can pull it away from there so you could see what would happen. Okay, so they try to go around both jaws. You're never, ever going to go around both jaws ever. Okay, if I take that out, you see that you just end up with a miss shape and loop back to my good piece. We started here, we bent this way. Then we moved our tool like this, and we pulled it across the top and stop. Now we're gonna just turned the tool. I'm not using the tool at to do work. I'm just moving it out of the way. So I've got one jaw in what's gonna be the loop and one jaw to the side holding my peace study, And now I'm gonna really hold that tight, and I'm gonna pull this around, rest in the way, and we have one part of our loop made. Now it's a little tiny bit. I want this circle to be centered on the stock, and it's a little bit further in this direction and not in that direction. So I can put this in now and I am actually going to use the tool to do work. Now, I'm just gonna very slightly turn that so that now my loop is mostly centered from side to side on top of the stock or the skim. I like to think of this now is like a little stick man. And he's got a big scarf and we want to wrap the scarf around his neck two times. So what's this is exactly how we are. So now we're gonna pull this part of the wire around the stem, and then we're gonna wrap it around two times. So a couple things first you're gonna notice comes around and then it comes around again directly underneath, and they're kind of sitting on top of one another in a little stack. We don't want to pull the second wire around up here or on top of this. We want it to be below it and nice and tight against it. So we're done with this round knows we don't need to make circles anymore. We've made our we've made our circle. Okay, so this is tricky. This is the part that my students have trouble with, so just pay attention. I'm gonna get my flat nose plier, and I'm gonna grasp that loop right there for no reason other than toe hold it and to keep it. It's protected in there, and it's not gonna get misshapen. But I need the bottom part of the loop on both sides and in the stem to be free. Now, if you're working with very soft buyer like this wire here, you can do this with your fingers. But when you're working with head pins, which tend to be much harder wire, you may need to use your other tool way out here on the end as a gripping tool to. And I've got a firm grip and I'm gonna pull that around and it does mess up the end of that , and that's fine. But that's why you're always going to use more wire than you think you need. You don't want to be trying to get these loops with some little tiny short piece, because that would never make it all the way around if we tried to just have a little time and short piece. So now I've got one rap, but I want grab one more time, something to come back rasp my wire pull it around and I'm gonna come down below that other loop. Other rap, and you see that so tight? I can't even get my fingernail in there. That's really good. Don't worry about this area. That's fine. Now let's turn it around. You can see this is where the loop start are the rap start and it comes all the way around . And now we get to hear So there's 21 the side. But I still really only have one wrap here, so I'll put this guy back in and hold him tight. And then I'm gonna come back out to the end with my round nose, and I'm just gonna really crank that around, okay? And now the rap goes all the way around. Now some people always wrap two times, and some people rap three times. It is up to you. I tend to wrap two times because I don't want a huge amount of wire showing on the top and bottom of my bead. This second part, remember, over here tight, tight, tight. And over here there's a little bit of a gap. You can come in and just snug that up together gently with your flat pliers. Now the cutting. If you have flush cutters, you're gonna identify this, Mom, it's tough to focus schools. Okay, see this little V channel on the top? And if I flip this around to the back, this is a flap. The flat side goes toward the work flat flush means up against, and we want to cut the wire flush against the work. But there are a couple of things to consider. If you are in the habit of cutting your excess wire off in this direction, you risk accidentally getting that Lupin there, which is going to be a bigger concern, obviously when you're working with smaller wire and cutting that loop and rendering it useless. But if there's a great big bead on here and my hand is the bead, it's gonna be hard. You can't come at it from the bottom, so you're gonna have to just figure out how you can get as close to that as possible. You want to just cut off this? You don't want to cut off your loops, you don't want to cut through your stem and you don't want to cut through this loop done. If you have cats or dogs or you care about your eyesight. You'll notice I'm holding this entire thing in the wire cutter. I can take my hand now and I can hold this wire and I can grasp the excess with my pincher fingers and cut. And now I have hold of everything. Nothing flew across the room. If this was sterling, silver or gold, I would place it in a safe place and collect all my scrap because that's worth money. So my cut has been done, and it's actually nice and smooth, and it's not catching my skin. Let me show you what happens when you don't put the flush when you don't put the flush side towards your work. If I put that I v side toward my work and I cut it, I end up with a Let's see. Can you see that end up with a sharp point that scratches me The other way this way should give me a nice straight flat cut. See how flat that is? That's what you want. That's why flush cutters are better than regular wire cutters, because these wire cutters obviously have a giant exaggerated V on the side And when I close the side, they have a small V on the other side. There's really not a good way for these to cut off flat. Come, I suggest that you watch this video a couple more times to really understand the concept of how to make this wire loop. If you do not succeed at it at first, don't worry. It takes practice in the next video. I'm gonna do the same thing. But I'm going to do it with the head pin with a bead on it so you can begin your first project, which is going to be to make a whole bunch of these in whatever size, so that you can practice making a loop and master that concept.
6. Class Project: Part 1: Making Loops on Headpins With Beads: Okay, let's make some of these guys on our head pins. I had to swap out my round nose. Plier. This is the one I've been using. You can see that these jaws are They should look like this and there. Quite uneven. And these are nice. And ive, by the way, if you wear glasses like Ideo, especially by Fogel's, you may want to get a magnifying lamp to help you work with tiny little objects like this. Here we are. I'm way down at the chippy of my tool. Beatus snug. I push away making my right angle. I turned the tool not to do work, but just to move the tool. And now I'm gonna pull ends a chance you can see. All right. So I'm pulling over the jaw and stopping half the loop is made. And just for the sake of ease, I'll try to do that again with my opposite hand. So I put the tool into the half of the loop I made, and I want it to the loop to be snug in there. And now I'm gonna see it's not snug. It's gets, you know? Okay, it's snug in there and I'm turning myself so that you can see I'm not worried about the bead. I'm just gonna go right past it. And so in this case, you can see that the loop is made. I haven't wrapped it yet. And this wire here is going behind the loop. It's easier for me if I don't try to grasp with loop on the same side that the wires on. So I'm gonna just flip that around and I'm gonna try to really it close here. Just grasping the loop, leaving the bottom part of the loop and the way the place that the wires cross free. And now I'm gonna pull pull poll because I want that wire to really touch the stem keeping it in. All right, I'm gonna get closer. Now. Hold on. Okay. Right there. See those two beautiful loops just stacked perfectly on top of each other on small pieces like this, You can see on this side it's only got one rap, and as I turn it, it turns into two. You know, this is such a small piece, it doesn't really matter. But just for the sake of consistency in my teaching, I'm gonna bring that around? Coming in with my good flush cutters. I use the flush cutters to hold the piece where I'm gonna cut it, Making sure my loop is not inside the cutters. I hold the scrap and I hold my peace. When you work with precious metals, you can get head pins that are not quite as ficus this, and you'd be able to get a little closer and cut that off. But that's that's looking good right there. I'm happy with that. Okay, One more time. Last one not worried about the bend in this had been because it just doesn't matter threading on my bead, and I'm not gonna narrate this one. I'm just gonna do it. Okay? This time I'm gonna use my row nose plier to make that, Luke. I mean, that wrapped tighter, Coop pulled so hard invented. Okay, I can fix it. See how I pulled so hard that I bent the loop in a loop is kind of cock eyed. All I have to do is come in and just kind of get that back on top like that. Let's cut this off. Gonna put the flat part of my plier or my own the flat part of my cutters toward the work right up against there and holding everything together so it doesn't go flying in there and Paula one more time this time, Quick. This is how when you practice, you can really make them quite quickly. And I'm gonna do it out here in the distance so that you can see what my hands were doing without It might not be exactly focused, but I'm gonna push away, move it around, pull it across the top and stop. Just turn my tool. So I let loose and I turned my tool. Put the rest away and we'll loop is made. And did you see how doing that so quickly? I ended up with a perfectly round loop, much more so than when I do it slowly. It's that I'm so used to doing these. And then when I want to do these myself by myself, I always use my brown nose plier way out. And I use that to get a wrap. That's super tight. Look at that. That right there is a thing of beauty. So Okay, join me in the next video after you've made as many of these little wrapped beads as you can and will get started on our class project, which is making a pair of earrings or even a pendant from the beads that you wrapped. I'll see you in the next video.
7. Class Project: Part 2: Constructing Earrings and Pendants With The Looped Beads You Made: Okay, let's make an earring with three drops. First thing we're gonna need is a jump ring, and you just need to find the opening. And I do that by using my finger now so that I put the opening right in the top and they use one pair of pliers, one side of the opening and another pair of players on the other side. And then I'm gonna turn this to face you and and I turned this toe face you so that you can see. Hopefully now, I would never really open a jump a ring that far, but I want you to see that it's open. Kind of like a spiral, not prying it open from side to side we're doing it from this one goes up and this side goes down, okay? And then all we have to do to make these earrings now is to slide them on to this jump a ring. And if I have one, that's a little longer. I remember I had one that was a little longer. I'm gonna put that one in the middle, because that will give me some balance. So just slide those on there and look I did have one that was a little longer. And it kind of worked to my advantage in this application because it looks nicer having it in the center. And now I'm just going toe slip, my dear wire onto the jumping as well, and I'm gonna let everything hang there now. This is where you just have to be a little careful. You don't drop it. And then it's the reverse process. I'm grabbing tightly, very close to the opening with one pair of pliers and with the other one in the night doing the opposite where I'm bringing them back together. So that is very good. And there's no gap there, and that's is hard as that is ca bam. So once you have all these made, you can really crank out some jewelry. Now, if we wanted this to be a pendant, we could I'll take I'll take the year wire often. I'll show you how I'm gonna do that again. I'm I'm just tilting it to the side. I'm not prying it open, and then I'm gonna tilt it back, and that keeps this little tiny seen here flush so nothing falls out. So if I wanted this now to be a pendant. If I was to just string this opposed to just string this on some chain pretend that this is chain it would not lay the way that I want it. So I'm gonna need another jump ring too. Act as what we call a bail B A I l toe hold that in place. Okay, When I make a necklace and I use a jump ring to attach it to a chain, I like to use seven millimeter oval jump rings. Oval jump rings have there opening on the side. So let me just get ahold of this with Para Plier so you can have a look at it. So that's an oval. And the opening is here. Now, why do I want that? The tension is going to be a top and the bottom the chain is gonna ride through this hole and pull on the top. Independent is gonna pull on the bottom. If I was using a regular jump ring for that, it could spread open and it could fall out. But because the opening is on the side on this oval jump ring, it's less likely to fail. But you open it the same way. You just want to find the split and used to pliers. You're not. Go up with one and down with the other. Just open it. They only want to open as much as you need to. And then I can slide on my piece that I made earlier. And put those two Look, those two pieces back together. And now when it hangs and it lays against you're Chester your neck, it's going to it looks like, um, look what happened. So when I put the jumping on, the long speed wasn't in the middle anymore. So fixed that using the things that you notice. So open this back up and you're gonna be tempted to do this like so. And I mean, OK, but that's you. Look, you see my nails. That's what happens when you use your nails tools. They look horrible. All right, so I want that guy to be in the middle, which means there he's clearly in the middle there. And now I can come back in here and I close this up. Okay? And now I have a spare bit of chain handy to show you what this would look like save all your little spare bits of chain because I have plenty of stuff that you can dio with those spare bits of chain other than using them to, uh, similarly, as long as we make the whole of our loop big enough, you can do the same thing with just a single bead and just have one single being you could imagine, making these in multiple colors and sliding this often citing another one on to match your outfit, whatever you like. Okay. And then to make the single earing, you have a couple of options. You could just place that hearing on that your wire. So I'm gonna open that your wire on the side and police sat right on there and come back in and close that, and that is the simplest way to do it. But the issue that I have with this is that depending on the size of your ear lobe, this might bang against your ear lobe. That's why I do like to place ah, 7 to 10 millimeter round jump oring there just to give it a little bit of a design element . The jumping rather than becoming ah, structural element, even though it is a structural element can now become an element of design. In my hearing, my little airing, Um, Luke is a little cock eyed, but you get the idea. All right? I hope you enjoyed this class. I hope that you make lots of little wire absolute beads and make all kinds of neat stuff with it. And be sure to poster projects in the project section. And you need to access the project section via skill share dot com versus on the APP. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you again.
Tara Finlay, ✅Left-Brain Artist and Instructor
