Wire Wrap Herringbone Earrings Tutorial - Beginner DIY jewellery making

Hi everyone, Samantha back here for another video. Hope you're all okay and life's treating you well. Today I thought we'd look at the herringbone wrap bead. It's a lovely wrap. As you can see here I've made a pair of earrings with the oval beads. Look how elegant and beautiful they are. Aren't they pretty? You can make these links to make bracelets. Here I've got some green agate beads. How pretty is that? And this is something else I'm working on for a bracelet. These are lapis coin beads with the herringbone wrap. You can also make them elongated to make longer earrings. I'll be doing a tutorial on these shortly so stay tuned. How sweet are they? I love these because you can actually put any sort of beads you want in there. These are seed beads. You can have them for the amount of children that you've got or how many marriages you've had. So stand by and I'll do a tutorial for these little beauties at some point. Another coin bead here that's going to be a pendant. You can make rings out of them too which will be another tutorial at some point. Today I thought we would make these. How beautiful are these? Little amethyst beads. So that's what we're making today. If you want to gather the materials I'll tell you what we need. We'll make these little pretties. So for the tutorial today we're going to need one millimeter wire which will be the base wire. You're going to need some six or seven possibly even five 0.5 millimeter bare copper wire. We're going to go for 0.6 today. You're also going to need as usual your flush cutters. You're going to need chain nose pliers as usual and again you know me by now hopefully six step bail making pliers or round nose and that's entirely up to you. Okay you're also going to need a basic ruler just so that we can measure out our lengths of our wires. You're going to need a jeweler's hammer and a steel bench block. Again you can pick these up really relatively inexpensively on the larger online retail stores. You guys in the states have some fantastic craft stores that we don't have here in the UK so I'm quite jealous. So those you're going to need those as well and of course you're going to need a couple of beads. Today I'm going to be using this color I can get into the bag. There we go okay these are really affordable they're just simply dyed jade but I really like the color of these so we're going to need two size eight beads for this particular tutorial today. So gather up all your equipment and we'll meet back and then we'll get going. Okay so we're back here hopefully you've gathered all your materials by now and we can go through this step by step together. So the basic construction of these beauties is you have a central core which is your one millimeter wire and we're going to make a little paddle at the end here just because it's pretty and easy and then at the top that forms the hoop in which to put your either a jump ring for your necklaces or an ear wire. Okay so you need to take your one millimeter wire and measure out a length of I would say approximately let's say three inches to be on the safe side you'll probably get away with two um so let's go for let's go for two and a half meet in the middle two and a half inches okay you're going to need obviously two of those so measure out two lengths okay so on the flush cut side we then want to create a little paddle shape which is this little this little shiny guy here at the end nice and elegant okay so this is where your hammering comes in. I'm not the best at hammering I have to say there are many many experts out there that will teach you how to do this in tutorials so you just need to bear with me whilst I get it right. So what you want to do is just very gently to start with hammer the end of the wire with your hammer so bear with me turn it over and you'll find that if you do a sweeping motion whilst you're hammering you won't flatten it too much and you'll get a nice rounded shape okay see you're left with that kind of shape there okay okay so I just cut the video there while I finished doing the hammering because it's not very pleasant to listen to on camera so um once you've made this paddle shape here you want to bring in a little file and just file down the edges make sure that they're not sharp because obviously this guy is going to go next to the skin um so it needs to be nice and smooth and straight there we go so you see that shape that's what we're aiming for give it a little bit of a file and that's the first part of the process done okay so the next thing we need to do is choose the bead okay so I've decided yeah that looks really nice against the copper doesn't it so we okay and then this is when we start to make our wraps okay so I'm going to take some wire um I'm not sure what length to use let's have a think oh it's getting all wound up okay let's have a think um probably about let's say about 12 12 inches 30 centimeters something like that just to be on the safe side give that a cut there we go now so get the kinks out of your wire if you're anything like me you'll get lots of kinks in your wires okay so right so the way I like to do it is I work from left to right so pop your bead on as you can see it won't go any further because you've got that little paddle on the end so don't worry about that dropping off now you want to be attaching the wire to this part of the of your base wire here so right at the very very end just attach your wire by bending it over and under and squeezing and pulling so it's nice and tight okay and that's your wire on you see then you want to just cut this little bit of excess off here tight as you can just mainly so that it's not getting in the way so now we have our wire attached and our bead okay now then because the wire here is going over the top you want it to go over the top every time you wrap so holding the wire taut against the bead as best you can bend the wire around hugging the bead closely it'll feel all fingers and thumbs at this particular stage but the next time you do the wrap the easier it gets okay so can you see how that's around the bead there over the top of the base wire wrap underneath and round on the top keep everything taut and neat okay this will help you as you go along so we've got this so we've gone over round over under and back over that makes sense okay rotate your component so that now this part is on the left hand side you want to be wrapping this one around the right hand side so again nice and neatly tightly against the bead wrap it round okay over the top underneath back round and over the top so you've completed your first wrap okay so i'll just show you the construction so each time we go round we go around over the top underneath and back over the top and we turn round over the top underneath back over the top and you just keep rotating okay so we're ready for our next wrap so always remember that at this point each one of your wraps goes behind the previous one you see behind nice and neatly behind over the top wrap it underneath back over the top again each time okay can you see that each time making sure your wire is nice and straight nice and taut okay so the next wrap behind the previous one okay over the top underneath back over the top again squeegee with your fingers if you have to okay there are various points when you can readjust if you need to like with this particular one here just need to pull that out a little bit there you go okay let's do another one round the back over the top underneath and wrap it back over the top rotate you see how i'm going behind the previous one over the top underneath and then over the top again okay you see how that's starting to take shape i think we'll do two more so behind over the top underneath and wrap back over the top again underneath the previous underneath over the top underneath the top and the last one underneath round okay so for this final one i usually do two wraps and then underneath if you need to squeeze things along a little bit you should take your chain nose okay give that a snip come in with your chain nose and just tighten that up a little bit okay this is what we have you see how pretty that is so we have five wraps on one side and five wraps on the other side again if you need to just readjust a little bit you can do nail in there a bit of a squash if you have to the whole point of these is that you know they're supposed to look a little bit organic um so don't get too hung up about them being extra extra straight i mean some of the ones i've made you know are more organic looking you can make them as straight as you like um but you know it's it's one of those things don't worry about it when you look at these guys here they're pretty uniform and i've brought these first wires down a little bit to sort of slightly encase the bead at the back but you know the whole point is that it's organic and pretty and nothing to worry about if you don't get it right first time okay so the paddle at the end here you want to bring this section down because this will move relatively freely down the base wire just pull until you can't pull anymore okay so this is what we have and this is what the back side looks like so you can see the wraps here underneath when you've gone underneath and then back over so this is what we're left with okay so once you've pulled your little component your little herringbone wrap down to the bottom so it sits on the paddle at the bottom and you can't go any further you then you need to make your little hoop in which to attach your jump ring or your ear wire okay so i know for my first step on my bail making pliers that this section here has to be around about a centimeter okay so i'm just going to measure that and then cut okay now this hoop will be this way flat if you want to attach an ear wire okay let me see that so just use your bail making pliers your usual chain nose pliers and bend this section away from you to about this kind of point here come in with the smallest step on the bail making pliers and hold it here so you just can't feel there you go the end of the wire and twisting your wrist in a nice gentle motion okay so we've made our hoop straighten things up a little bit with your chain nose that's fine to attach a jump ring too if you want to make a pendant out of it which i think makes a very pretty pendant if you want to put an ear wire on it okay you'll need to straighten things up so very gently using both sets of your pliers straighten things up here okay so that's the first one made so that's your basic herringbone i hope you've enjoyed having a look how to make these guys i think in future projects we'll have a look at how to do different shapes like the coin beads the oval beads but these guys just to start with are perfect for eight millimeter six millimeter beads um elegant earrings have fun with those and i'll see you in the next tutorial have a good day guys thanks bye