How to Make a Simple Loop - Easy Jewellery Making Techniques
Hey everyone, it's Carol here. If you're new to my channel, welcome.
Today I'm going to show you how to make two things, a pea loop and a simple
loop. If you enjoy this video please subscribe to my channel and
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To make these loops you're going to need some tools.
I have here a pair of chain nose pliers, a pair of round nose pliers and a pair
of flush cutters. You'll also need, I've also got here
some 20 gauge half hard German style wire,
a fine tip felt pen and a ruler. So let's take a look at what we need to do
to make a loop. So the first thing we're going to do is make a pea loop.
Now pea loop is exactly how it sounds, it looks like a pea.
Before I start making my loop I'm going to take the end
of my wire and I'm just going to trim it off because
at the moment it's quite sharp and pointy and I want it to be flat.
So I'm going to take my flush cutters using the
flush side of my cutters and I'm just going to trim off the end, just the
smallest amount and I'm holding the end just to make sure
that it doesn't fly away. Okay so now I've got a nice flush end
on my wire. Now I'm going to take my round nose
pliers and I'm putting the wire between the
jaws of the pliers. Now I don't want it to stick up, I want
it to be even with the jaws so when I rub my
finger over I shouldn't be able to feel it.
Next what I'm going to do is I'm going to
twist my wrist holding the wire coming out the bottom of the pliers between my
my forefinger which is basically underneath the pliers and my thumb
and I'm just going to give it a little twist as far as my wrist will go.
Then I'm going to take the pliers out, pop them back in on the lower jaw this
time and I'm going to continue that twist
and basically what I'm looking for is to continue the twist until this
long wire runs right across the top of the jaws of the pliers
and there is a pea loop. Now you can see why it's called a pea loop, it looks
exactly like a pea but what we really want is to have the
loop centered on the wire. For example if we make a component like
this one it would be a bit strange if the
loops were all off center because it wouldn't hang right so we
need to make a loop centered on top of the wire. It's
important when we make loops that if you're making a component for
example something like this that you might use as an earring or part
of a necklace it's important to make the loops the same size.
For example if you made this loop a lot smaller than this one
on one earring and not on the other one earring would be longer than the other
so it is really important to get things the same size so I'm going to show you a
few tricks on how to do that. The first one is to take your round nose
pliers and your
fine tip marker. Now what I'm going to do is closing the jaws of my pliers I'm
actually going to make a little mark across the pliers
where I want to make my loop so with your round nose pliers the further up
you make the loop the fatter it will be or the bigger the loop will be
so I generally sit about this one centimeter up from the bottom of the
pliers that's pretty much how I do my average loop unless I'm
wanting something bigger. By marking the pliers like this it
allows you to see always where to line up your wire.
Now I'm going to take my wire and I'm going to do almost exactly the same as I
did with the pea loop so I'm popping the wire through
and I'm twisting away from me as far as my wrist will go
and I'm taking the pliers out putting it back on the bottom jaw
notice I'm lining it up with that mark again
I'm going to twist some more just like I did before
until that wire is laying over the pliers
then I'm going to take my thumbnail and I'm going to line it up with where the
end of the wire meets the other piece this piece this top piece
and I'm just going to push my thumbnail in and rotate back a little bit
and you might need to re-close your loop a bit
just using small movements until you have a nicely closed loop
and there you can see it's centered nicely on the wire
sometimes you might find the need to give your
loop a little push through the pliers like this with the pliers like this
just because it might be sticking up a little bit and that's absolutely fine
and you might even need to wiggle it closed a bit by just
up and down a little bit pushing in so there's my loop
so now we're going to make a little pair of earrings using our looped wire
and I will show you how to open and close them and that kind of thing
so what I've got here is some beads and bead caps
now obviously you can use anything you like to make your earrings
these are just some that I had and you'll notice that I'm using
a silver wire with gold ear wires and beads and bead caps and that's just me
I really like the idea of mixing my metals so
I do this quite often so what I'm going to do is just feed them on in the order
I've got them there, bead cap, bead, bead cap going the other way
obviously this is super easy earrings are so much fun to make
and the bicone bead the large gold one and I'll leave a link below to all of
the materials you will need to make these
earrings but you can pop any earring any beads on and make an
earring that's that's the fun of it so there we are
I've got all my beads on and it's looking really pretty
but before I go ahead and make my loop at the top I'm going to measure this
piece now remember what I said about your earrings
needing to be the same size so what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take my ruler and measure so there's my ruler and I'm going to
line up the bottom side of the loop the bottom end
of the loop with the zero using the centimeters and
just line it along line it up along the ruler edge of the
ruler here and I can see that if I leave about a
centimeter above the beads for my loop which is about the size that making a
loop takes I can see that I need to cut it at four
centimeters so I'm just going to do that I'm going to take my flush cutters flush
side and I'm going to cut the wire there at
the four centimeter mark now remember that four centimeter number
you'll need it later okay now to make the loop we're going to
do it slightly differently we're going to bend the wire at the top
to a 90 degree angle or a right angle now I'm going to take my round nose
pliers and this time I'm lining it up with that
mark that I made exactly the same but what I'm doing with
my thumbnail here is I'm actually putting my thumbnail right into that
corner of that 90 degree angle now I'm going to push as I twist
my wrist I'm actually going to push down a little bit and the reason I'm doing
that is so that my loop will stay nicely centered
changing the to the bottom jaw and continuing on my loop
and sometimes you need to do it a couple of times as I said
okay and my loop is my earring component has gone a little bit
bent so I'll just give it a bit of a tweak
and there is my earring component now what I want to do now
is add a ear wire to this there's several ways I can do that
I could open the loop on the bottom of the ear wire
or I could open the loop on the top of the earring this time I'm going to open
the loop on the top of the earring because it's good for you to know how
so I'm going to take my pliers here and I'm holding the side of the loop so
this side is the is the side that opens and I'm holding the side of it
don't hold it like this hold it like this and I'm just going to twist
up so moving my wrist down and twisting the pliers up then I'm
going to pop on the ear wire and just reverse that action now
sometimes what happens is when you do that
you'll find that your ear wire that your loop isn't quite closed
so what you do now is you rift up and down and push it in until it closes so
just give it a bit of a wiggle and there you have an earring
now we need to make another one obviously so remember
before when I said to you that we needed to remember that
number well we needed to remember it because
we need to measure this one exactly the same so that our earrings are exactly
the same size so I have laid my wire down on my ruler
I have lined my the bottom of my loop up with my
with zero taking my flush cutters and I'm just
going to pick up the wire with the point of my flush cutters
at the four centimeter point and I'm just going to cut them
cut the wire now we know that this piece will be exactly the same
size as this piece when we've made our loop
so next we're putting on our beads so we went bead cap
large bead and the other bead cap the bicone the large one
a large gold bead a small gold bead okay so that's exactly the same as we
had before going to bend it using my my fingers I'm
just going to bend it by over my thumbnail there to a 90 degree
to a right angle now I'm going to take my round nose pliers
remember using that mark that I made and I'm just going to push my thumbnail
into that corner push down and around away from me
reposition the pliers and continue on until the loop is closed
now this time I'm going to show you how to open the air wire instead of the loop
so if we take a look at our air wire you can see there that one side is open and
one side is not just like the standard loop that you
just made so we're going to take our pliers
chain nose pliers hold the side of the air wire just like we did before
and rotate pop on the component grab the side of the loop again
and just close it and there it is nicely closed
so now you know how to make loops and you've also got a pair of cool earrings
so I hope you've enjoyed this video if you have as I said please subscribe
and ring the bell and check out my other techniques videos
thanks for watching I'll see you again soon