Wire work pendant - 'Ripples'

Hi guys, this is Nadia from E-RollerCraft and in this tutorial I want to show you how to create a pendant with a prong set focal. If you haven't already hit the subscribe button because I put new stuff on a regular basis. I quite often make kits and pdf tutorials for the videos I put up on here and I'll pop a link in the description below and I also have all sorts of gemstones, square and half on wire, some beads and all sorts of other goodies on my website so take a look over and see if there's anything you fancy. Last but not least come and join us in our wire wrappers and metalsmiths group on Facebook. I'll also pop a link below. Right let's get started. So cut our lengths of square wire and I'm going to grab my base wire and my weaving wire and I find the midpoint of my weaving wire and the midpoint of my base wire and I'm going to start with one wrap around the middle and then I'm going to bring in a second wire, place it on top and I'm going to go around both and then in between wire one and two and then bring in the third base wire place on top go around wire two and three and then I'm just going to go once around the middle I mean not the middle well yeah once around the top wire which will obviously be in the middle then on my way back I'm just going to go in between wire one and two and then wrap around wire two and three go all the way down to the bottom and wrap around wire one and two and then I'm going to repeat the sweep and put about five wraps on the bottom wire like that and then I'm just going to repeat this weave for about six or so times so we're going to bend this in half and I'm going to do the same on the other side so I'm going to do this now and then I'm going to show you the next step. Right I've done about four sets and I think I've decided to kind of flip it over and I'm going to bend these wires in so I'm going to keep the open part of the weave on the outside I'm going to bend this innermost wire up at an angle like a sharpish one I'm going to do the same with the middle wire and it's probably a bit easier to do that first it's quite difficult to grab a hold of the wire so bend this across like that and then you've just got this last one you're going to need to account for the space that is required for the bend so you kind of have to guesstimate where to put the bend like that so now you have the choice of either filling up the weave at the bottom with some loops of wire and wraps or just leave it bare a bit of a mess of this but yeah so that's what it looks like so we're quickly going to straighten this out and then we're going to continue to weave on the other side okay so straighten it out so now I'm going to start with the same thing so because I've got a loop in the middle I'm going to start by wrapping my weaving wire once around wire three and two I'm going to go up and wrap it around wire one and two like that and that will help to also get the gap evened out between the wires so now I'm going to wrap once around wire one and then we're traveling back down so once around wire one two open this up a bit and then around wire two and three and then it's the five wraps and obviously this time it's around the top wire rather than the bottom because the weave's flipped so I'm going to put five wraps around that wire there and then we're going to put four weaves in total on the other side as well and then see where the next step will take us all right so I've done four on each side so now I'm going to create a swirl on each side so try and keep the wire as flat as possible you don't really want to twist it and just very slowly bring this wire around like that nice and small and then the next one follow the path of the first just taking time with that and all the while try and keep the wire nice and flat that kind of line them up as you come round and we're also going to do the same with the third one so it's sort of a nice swirl pattern like that you can arrange these however you want like a little bit of a gap there it's quite nice as a detail and then we're going to do the same on the other side so obviously you want to make sure that this is going to be as symmetrical as possible just so that you know it looks pleasing to the eye so I'm going to be doing the other side and we're going to decide what we're going to do with these wires now okay so I've now made them go symmetrical and I kind of lined up the wires here parallel so as I said earlier try and make sure that the square wire kind of sits nice and flat so that you don't have any edges standing up on end so we're going to do next is we're going to join all of these wires together so I'm going to take the weaving wire from doesn't matter which side I'll find it easier to start the weave from here so what we're going to do is bring the wire up I mean you could bring in a new piece of wire but if you've been watching my videos you know I like to reuse wires so I'm just going to wrap the weaving wire once around each of these try and bring them in as tightly as you can like that and zoom in a bit like that and see which is which here bring it in last one I'm just going to line them up as best as you can like that and this will initially join them so now you can then push this down a bit until you're happy with the sort of placing of that and that will initially join them together like that right so next we need to travel back up so just going to go around two wires at a time and then back so around wire one and two in between wire one and two like that I'll just try and make it a little bit tidier okay like that and then we're going to go around wire two and three between that wire three and four sometimes they get mixed up so what you can do in that bend the ends out a little bit like that so now you can actually see what I'm doing and then you just keep weaving around two wires at a time like that and then we're going to come back one more time so just around one wire each like that and that kind of binds everything together you need to do that once so then make sure everything is neat and tidy use a pair of pliers and that kind of ties everything in place so now I'm going to create the bail so that looks like at the moment so next to create the bail so I'm going to first shape the outer wires like that I'm going to bring them out a bit to the side I'm going to create like a sort of oval shape like that and these wires I'm going to bring these forward for now and then we're going to shape you can make this as big or as small as you like and obviously if you make a bigger bail you'll need more wires like that okay so I'm just going to shape this in like that and then once you're happy with the shape we're going to straighten out the legs so one at a time you can mark these actually with um make sure that you account for the curvature like that I'm doing the same on the other side you obviously want to make sure that everything is symmetrical you can don't worry if you don't get it right straight away first time around this wire is one you don't if you don't mark them and bend them too much you can adjust them as we go along so that's a little bit wonky but obviously I said just now I can adjust this so that's what it looks like at the moment so we're obviously going to fix that make it a bit straighter and then we're going to be all right so we've got the shape so now we're going to start by bringing this weaving wire around you need about three meters um for this bail if I'm not mistaken roughly and for the size um so I'm going to wrap the weaving wire around both of these wires here and I'm going to travel across and I'm going to open these up this is slightly go around the innermost wire once like that just put it nice and tight come around and then wrap it around the outer wire once like so and then push it down and then I'm going to come around both of these wires and travel back like that and then wrap around innermost wire and once around the outer wire if you want to do that like so and then I'm going to come around the inside and travel all the way back and repeat the process like so and that just kind of creates like a recessed bail so then I'm just going to repeat this process until I get roughly to the end of we're going to set a stone in here so depending on the size of the stone you need to create a backing space for the stone to sit in so roughly make that woven section as long as your stone if that makes any sense I'm going to do that and then we're going to do the next step right so I've woven up enough to be able to place a 10 millimeter stone so the weave kind of touches up where the stone ends you want to make sure that it's as snug as possible so I've used a pair for this but um you can also use an oval or round whatever it is that you want to use there it's quite easy to make it fit I find the pair fits nicely into the slot there at the bottom um so that's what I've used so once you are satisfied with the weave we're going to do is take the wires and kind of fold them over the stone slightly just take your time with that um bring a pair of pliers and then put a little bend somewhere near the end you want to make sure that goes over the stone I'm going to do the same on the other side just kind of wedges it in place like that you want it to go down near the bottom same with the other side you want it to meet up at the bottom again like that and once you're satisfied put a bend in the wire to bring it back up again and then it's not too critical that it's 100 at this minute you can kind of arrange it at the moment it's just to kind of get the stone to fit and you can push it down a bit you really want it to be as tight to the bottom as possible so you can use a pair of pliers to kind of shape it out a bit like that push the stone down and then we want to make sure that these wires these two wires holding the stone in place line up through the middle and they need to come together so I'm going to attach them so it's fine that they go over the stone like that later on you can push them apart a little bit well first we want to make sure that these wires are attached so I'm going to neaten this up a little bit because it's always difficult for me to get this straight when I'm filming something I'm going to straighten it out and then we're going to be weaving this in place but this is what you need to do so bend it over the stone a nice curvature and then make sure that the wires are bent down parallel so that we can weave them back into place okay so arranged so now what we need to do is you can see here the wires are nice and parallel with the weave so we need to come back and tie this in place so what we'll do is exactly the same weave as before so we're just going to go in and around both wires and instead of crossing all the way over to the other side we're going to go around the wires in the center so we're going to bend these out a little bit so we're just going to wrap the moving wire around the wire in the middle just make sure it's nice and central as well you want it to run up in the middle um and not monkey happens to me quite a bit so I have to pay attention to that moving to the second wire and you want this to be as tight as possible these two together and make sure again everything is nice and straight you can adjust this in a minute as well at the moment we're just concentrating on attaching the wires holding this stone so going to come into this side wrap it around here and then around the outer wire and then we're going to go exactly the same way going to come back and then on the way to the other side this time we're going to go around both wires just once it's just a preference you can go you know around each wire once if you want I just like the pattern um of you know ones around one wire and then the other and then the next one around both and the pattern looks nice to me but you can do it differently all right so then again coming back and we're going to repeat this pattern it's going to go around the outside wire and then once again we're going to go around that's actually around once like that so I'm going to confuse myself now so now coming back as before round one and then around two like that and then we're just going to continue with this for a little while until it's adjusted you can see um it's not quite straight yet but it doesn't matter because you can once you're happy with that you can then later adjust it once the weave is in place this will hold the stone in place and later on when we are bending the bail this will press against the stone and further um attach it so it doesn't matter at the moment just make sure that they're kind of the same lengths on each side it doesn't matter if they don't sit over the stone 100 now as long as they're flush and make sure that there's no gap and you can adjust the way that the stone and the wire sits over the stone at a later stage and don't forget on occasion when you're doing this weave is to push down the weaves I find that this really helps with neatness and not everybody does it and that's why I'm so slow because I do it all the time I can't weave anything neat without having to um to go in and just some people are able to weave neatly from scratch I can't do it so I need to go in and adjust so it's that so I'm just going to continue with this until I reach the top okay so now finish this and I've extended the weave a little bit at the top just so that we have some extra length so we're going to do now is bend the um the bail forward a bit like that and then I'm just going to shape it I'm going to take the um middle legs and then pull them so you can shape it you can either use bail making pliers or you can just use your fingers you'll see that the weave will push the stone against the wires holding it so you can always adjust a little bit so it doesn't pop out unless you're gentle you don't want to mark the wire and then before we bend it out fully we're just going to bring these legs through like that and then we're just going to bring this in like that and then adjust it it's really happy so then we're going to use these legs here to attach everything to the frame bring it through here and then these ones going to come up like that and then we don't want to tighten these up too much because obviously we don't want to squash these together too much so we're just going to gently press these down actually I'm going to trim this off because we don't need it like that so far that's what it looks like and you can obviously make sure that it is adjusted so that this is central and focalized and focalized is that even a word so it's central and in the middle let's say that um and at the moment so we're going to be attaching these not quite sure yet and we might use these to create a bit of detail there but I'm not sure yet so I'm going to see we're going to put that and this is at the moment where we are with the design okay so it's now all put through so I haven't attached it yet because we need to open this up again at some stage just to let these through but what we're going to do first is take the stone that you want to put in there and I've got a pair I think it's a 16 mm not sure I need to double check that but you can decide you can either place it up like that I'm not sure I'm going to do yet or upside down and then kind of wedge it I think that might look quite nice so we need to use the gaps that we have on the side so what we're going to do is turn this around and we're going to mark the wires at the back we need to weave these together so I think maybe roughly here we start to weave maybe here and just a few figure of eight weave to you know attach these four wires together we need to bend these wires to the side and then they need to come through the front because we're going to need to use these wires to loop over the stone to hold them in place so there's going to be a little bit of a fiddly bit just now but that's okay so we're going to do next is just take a piece of weaving wire 0.4 in this case which is 26 gauge and this one broke off my piece just now just cut this down you don't need a long length maybe about 20 centimeters or so to take the stone out I'm going to do is just attach which is easier to weave from top to bottom so I'm just going to bring this in and all I'm going to do is go around these wires once on my way down and just kind of attach them together so you can bring this out a little bit since we haven't attached the wire at the front yet this is all zoomed in you don't need to pull too tight at the back we want to preserve that little gap to hold the stone just bring it up to push these in then on the way back just around two wires at the same time remember not to pull too hard when you get to the middle and then we're just going to repeat this on the way down again so just one wrap around one wire each and so forth we're just going to do a few lowers like to push up the weaves when I can helps me make it look tidy that's what it looks like at the moment so we're just going to do maybe two or three of these just to bind the wires together we need to make sure we leave enough space so that we can bend these wires out right so I'm going to do that and then we move on to the next and the weave so now what we need to do is bring this through so it's a bit tricky at this stage open this up we kind of need to get these legs through without bringing the whole thing through so if you can trim this off a bit more because we don't need them to be that long make things a bit easier so now just bend these slightly in that's it and then bring these through touch yeah isn't this there we go so now they they are through so we need to arrange them so that we can use them to attach to the stone so we need to bend them sideways so I'm going to bend these start with the one on the left or the right rather these are back in place we can attach these just now so the upper one needs to have a slightly higher bend than the bottom one because obviously we need space and then we need to come up right in the corner so so that we can seat the stone create a little basket the same on the other side just try and keep as symmetrical as you can the inner one and the lower one so that creates your seat so they're not very even so I'm going to adjust those but you get the idea and then we can then later place the stone top of it and then close the wires not seated yet because we need to bend these in so that's basically the idea so I'm just going to adjust this wonky seating here and then we're going to be setting the stone okay so arranged it that's what it looks like at the moment so now it would be better if it came down a little bit more for more support at the tip I think that will do so I'm going to put the stone in and slide it into place and then the next step is to use these wires to hold it in place I'm going to first bend them in and bend them over the stone keep your finger on the stone itself so it doesn't come out do the same with the other one try and keep the square wire nice and flat you don't want to twist it so gently just take your time you don't want to kind of mangle the wire I'm just putting it through and kind of folding it over the edge make sure everything is still zoomed in just make sure you cover enough of the stone can't fall out and do the same in the front and that's what we're going to do with this bit in a moment so basically this is the jest of things at the moment this kind of holds you obviously make this look a bit better from the side and all of that and we're going to be attaching this around the frame here so that's what it looks like at the moment all right so fixed it up a bit so I'm going to do from the back I quite like to give this a little bit more stability so I'm going to do is just simply tie these two together with a figure of eight weave because that will mean there's a bit more stability when we are attaching these at a later stage so what we're going to do is simply wrap around once or twice so now that what that means is that when we are moving these wires here there isn't enough space for these to kind of move around so much so now these are tied together and the same I think we're going to do some here as well so all I'm going to do is bring some of the remaining wire over and I think I'm just going to come in through the bottom here there's enough space no it doesn't okay so it's fine so we'll just come in from the front we're going to do the same here just like a basic figure of eight weave around the tip and this is just so that it gives it a little bit more so hold your finger over that it gives you more sort of structure and a weave can't move around as much that's it and that's all so that kind of gives it a bit more stability I think we're going to be doing something with these I was planning to lay them against the stone but now it looks like there isn't enough space so I need to rethink that in the meantime I'm going to tie the up and we're going to do next is tie these off as well and we'll be attaching these maybe we'll do some swirls with these not too sure yet um so let me fix it up and then we'll move on to the next step all right so I have now adjusted everything so now we need to do something with the front so I'm going to lift this up a little bit I'm going to there will be enough space actually to swirl this since I'm going to cut this off first I really need that I need to make the space for the swirl so now I'm going to do is take this slowly lay it against the stone and actually cut yourself a little bit I'm always relaxing to cut things off you know and we'll do this and it's well it's actually still a bit long I think don't do you can always trim it off as I always say you can always cut off more it's difficult to add in so I have a tendency to cut off as I go along squeeze the tip give you a little bit of a rounded or narrowed down tip kind of lay this against the stone like that I'm going to do the same on the other side so just make sure that you keep them symmetrical it's going to be doing that on the other side as well all right so now attach these so got this one I think we may feed this wire through the frame and then attach at the back but I may want to use it later to add some beads as always we're these wires that have come over the top of the stone and we need to sort of attach these to the frame so a little bit long at this stage so I'm wondering actually if we can actually bend these through don't cut them off just yet so I'm going to do let's just feed these through the frame like that then we're going to attach these down I'm not sure you can roll it and if the wire is a bit longer you can kind of roll it and that will help you to get it tight and squeeze that will kind of attach everything so now this is attached check it from the front that's nice and tight we can hide this ugly bit here with maybe a stone or so later on we'll see what we're going to do with these I don't know so that's attached so obviously we're going to be doing the same on the other side and we're going to trim this wire off I'm wondering if we should bring it across the front but I don't think so so we're going to do let's just trim it off here and then kind of roll it in like that and then just wrap it around the frame here so that will attach it and now it's nice and tight we're obviously going to be doing the same with the other side all right so that's all tidied up and now we need to decide what to do with these things so I'm thinking I might create a little bit of detail here I'm not sure if that's going to work so I'm going to do these around the frame this will also give an additional area where it's going to lay against a stone so I'm going to bring it out here like that and grab a pair of pliers and just kind of wiggle it through keep your finger over the stone so this doesn't get pushed through nice and tidy so now we don't want to overlap this wire because I kind of like the way these were sitting so try and keep them flat you can still so we've got these here we can use to bring it up a bit more so that sits in the gap better right now I can use this to create a little detail kind of squeeze this in a bit so I lose my pliers when I'm sitting down happens to me all the time all right so now we need to squish this down a little bit more so that they lie nice and flat we also don't want to distort these flat wires running so take your time with that and then lay them down like that so now we can create a swirl I want to make sure that this is lying flat otherwise it's going to be loose you don't really want that now you can create a little detail this wire sitting on top cut this off and then obviously use your random suppliers thinner tip that and then curl it in it goes very gently manipulate the wire as you go it's obviously arrange it until you're happy with it and needs a bit of tidying up we're going to be doing obviously the same on the other side looks like at the moment okay so now I've done the same on the other side and I have already put the pendant in loss and polished it up and the last step is to add a prong setting always I put a link to these settings in the description below try and keep the videos short by doing these separately so what we're going to do is create a setting and then we're going to pop this in the space you don't have to do it you could use a bead if you wanted to instead if you don't really want to do the prong setting and then obviously attach use the legs of this to find the place anywhere on the frame to attach and obviously tuck the wires away and then that's that and the last step is to add some beads all around and for that we're going to be using some some weaving wire as well so just stitch some beads in place using some weaving wire you can just travel around to the other side and stitch them in place as well so just reuse the weaving wire and when I stitch my way around the pendant and try and put the weaving wire in areas that it's not quite as obvious and so I like to reuse because that cuts down on on wire ends that can potentially scratch your skin or maybe you know pull a thread in your clothing and that's the whole pendant done I really hope you enjoyed this and as I said earlier I've made a kit for so you can find this on my website or on my etsy shop alongside all sorts of other goodies like copper beads wire gemstones and amongst other things and if you feel like it come and join our artist group on facebook which is called wire wrappers and metalsmiths worldwide we're a fun bunch and get up to all sorts of interesting things in the group and also if you feel like following me on any of my social media I've got facebook instagram tiktok obviously my youtube channel and I'll pop a link again description below all my handles and all my platforms are or is in bali crafts so just follow that and find them there and that's it for me thank you so much for watching hope to see you next time