DIY Wire Wrapped Jewelry: Step-by-Step Tutorial

In a previous video, I showed you how to do this easy wire wrap using 20 gauge wire and 28 gauge wire. And what I'm going to do today is show you another method of doing it that is just as easy. But this time I'm going to be using 18 gauge wire and I'm going to be using silver plated copper wire. I just find I work much better with copper wire rather than aluminium because I find aluminium is far too soft for my clunky hands. Now I know people make some amazing products with that so don't discount it just because I don't use it very often. I'm going to cut myself a couple of strands like this and that's the stone that I'm using. And the stone is in height just under 4cm which is 1.5 inches and I've cut myself about 13 inches of wire which is about 32cm. And I'm going to stretch that wire out a little bit, well flatten it out a little bit before I do the next stage. And the next stage is to cut this into four. This is just something I kind of made up the other day and I do sometimes sit here playing around with wire and gems and see what I can make. Now I've got my four strands. I know that they're going to be big enough for what I want to do on that. And I'm going to straighten them out using my nylon ended pliers. I never get them fully straight but at least they're better than they were. And now all I need to do is line up the ends which is great and make sure that these are all lined up as well next to each other as opposed to you know crossing each other and things like that. I'm going to do a bit of a weave. I'm going to roughly do the centre there. Just going to clamp that down roughly in the middle there. Make sure they're spread out enough, not too much but enough to get another wire through them. I bow out the wires because I find that that makes life a little bit easier for me. And then I need some 28 gauge wire about, I don't know, two and a half foot maybe. Because I'm going to weave that in between here. Now I do a simple weave. I don't want to do anything that's too fancy smancy because I'm not very good at fancy smancy. So all I do is tuck my wire into the first one like that and go round once pulling it fairly tight. And then go up and over and the next one and then round that one again. I then go up and over the next one and round that again pulling it tight. I then go up and over the next one and round that again bring that down. And then I go under that one and then under it again like that pulling it together. And I go under that next one on the way down and then under it a second time. and under the third one, pulling it tight, under it a second time, under that one, and under that one again, and then I'll take my nails and I'll push those all together. And I'll keep doing that same pattern all the way down until I've got them all joined up. One and a half centimetres, which is just over half an inch. And that is going to be the outside. The next thing is to put a bend in it, as close to the middle as you can get really. I'm never very good at getting them in the middle, but there we are. And you can have this stone going up this way. I've already done one where I've got the stone going up, but this time I want the stone going down, so the pointy bit of the stone is at the bottom. So I can put that finally into that middle there, gently keeping these together. I want all these wires here at this stage to be on the outside. I don't want them crossing over anywhere on that stone. So that's in there like that. Move that to fix that in anyway, rightly. Don't worry about that. So pushing that up. And now I want to weave these wires in between each other. So I've got this outside one, this outside one is going to go there, then this one next, I've got the right one, in order, if that makes sense. So all those, I've got one from that side, one from that side, one from that side, one from that side, one from that side, and they're going in there like that. Now this is where I can put my stone in, make sure I've got it in the right position. Yep, so that's in the right position. Now all I'm going to do is bend those two down there like that, and I'm going to bring those together and give them a twist. And that's locked them all into place. But those two back ones here, this is what I'm going to make bail out of. Now you can weave this, you can do another weave like we've done down there, but with two going into a figure of eight, or you can leave it like that. I am going to weave it, because this is the bail and it looks quite nice weaved. And you just do it in exactly the same way I like a figure of eight weave. I think to me it looks quite nice. Let's move those out of the way, let's tip that one up there, tip that one up there. I'm going to start quite low down, and I'm going to start with three loops on one side, and this is really just to lock the wire in. Come back over, under here, and then three loops this side, pull that tight. And now I can just weave it in a figure of eight, doing exactly the same thing, and this happens really, really quickly. And then when I've got far enough down there, I push my wires nice and tight again, and then I'll finish it off with three twists that side, go back under here, and three twists that side. And then this side is going to be the inside of the bail. Move that forward a little bit like that, cut that off there, and again we don't want that sharp bit there, so all I'll do is I will move it down and put it in between these two wires there. And now I'm going to make my bail, and that couldn't be easier to make. I do this with my hand, all I do is I think what sort of size bail do I want, bend it round like that, and get a hold of the bit where it's just before where I've curled those wires, and I'll bend it on itself like that. And now I can bring these wires, these three wires, round the back. If you need a bit of gripping on this, then use your pliers, and they'll go around, still in line with that, until they get to the front here, and they will sit just under that cross there. We're going to tidy those up in a minute, but that now is locked in there. That stone isn't going to go anywhere, but we're going to do something else to strengthen that stone anyway. We've got the two bits from the bail that are sticking out here, which we'll do something with as well, and we've also got these three bits here. So let's deal with the bail ones first. I'm taking my wires that have got the round tips, and all I'm going to do here is turn this into a little circle that comes back on itself like that, and that'll sit there. And then this other one, bring that out, and I'll wind that the other direction, so it's in an opposite direction to the one I just wound, and that will sit there like that. And then these ones, I'll do something similar with. That one's a bit long. That way, you've got no ends that you need to tuck in or do anything with, because they've all become something to do with the actual design, and I like that much easier because it's far less scratchy bits then, or possible scratchy bits. And then I'll follow that one, and this time I'm going to go all in the same direction. Wrap on itself like that, squeeze those down a little bit. They've got a little bundle like that. So you've got one, two at the back, one there. Then you've got these three wires. You can either clip them off and bring them around into the bail, or you can carry on doing these bits, because if you bring them off into the bail, then they're not going to be shown at all, are they? So I'm going to bring these two into the bail, but this one, I'm going to do another little circle, and have that on the top of the bail. Thank you to everyone that got me a coffee last month. I can't tell you how much it really does help me keep this channel going, and the other channel as well. It would be impossible to be able to do this without, so thank you. Your names are coming up now, and if you'd like to buy me a coffee just to help support this channel, then the link for that is in the description below, and it really is appreciated. So we now need to cut these wires off long enough, so that we can tuck them in the bail, but not too long that they're going to cause problems. There we go, so we can't see those anymore, and then all I'm going to do is, with these wires that are around the back of this, I'm going to bring one of them over a little bit more, take my round nose pliers, and then roughly in the middle of that, I'm going to do a little twist like that, and the same for this one. That stone is never ever going to go anywhere, and then this one, I'm going to do that way, that way there, that way, that way there, and then we're finished. That's it. How easy is that? And it looks great with the cord on. There we go. Look at that. I think that's really, really pretty, and easy to do wire wrapped pendant. Hope you've enjoyed this video. If so, and you'd like to see some more wire wrapping, or anything like this, then let me know in the comments. I love reading your comments. I will link everything that I've used today in the description below, so don't panic. You'll get hold of it really, really easily. Be sure to check out the video where I show you how to do this. I also make earrings as well using that same pattern. Very simple. Take care. Enjoy your crafting. Bye.