Nugget Chain Bracelet | Jewelry 101

Hey guys, welcome into the show. My name is Susan Thomas. Glad to be here with you guys today. I was thinking I'd like to show you this because this is done with the Nuggets. And I know a lot of you guys have the Nuggets at home. And I know a lot of you guys have these silicone sliders. And I know a lot of you guys have wire and you kind of know how to use wire. So I thought, well, let me think of a way that I could use those three things together. And ta-da, this is what I came up with. So the way to do this is to start with some 20 gauge wire. What we're gonna do here is we're gonna start with three pieces of 20 gauge wire. I'm gonna bend this back into a nice sharp angle. That's like a 90 degree angle right there. And I'm gonna use my bail shaping pliers. Now, why am I using bail shaping pliers instead of round nose pliers? Well, I want a perfect circle. And to get a perfect circle with three pieces of wire, especially 20 gauge wire, is very difficult if you only have, if you have a round nose plier because they're graduated. So I am going to just wrap those two like so. And then I am going to trim off those extra wires. So I wrapped them two times around because it just gives a better, more consistent wrap, especially since you're gonna have three kind of edges right there that you're gonna flush cut off. And then I just use my chain nose plier to press the ends down and into those wires. All right, so the reason I use three is because I want three wires to work with. So I'm just gonna spread those out like so. It's a lot of wire. I understand, you know, that it just kind of is what it is. So you just spread those out so you can do something kind of fancy on there. Now, first thing I wanna do is add one of those silicone sliders. So I'm using a big one. You don't have to use the biggest ones. Smaller sizes fit. We have these in different sizes. We've got this one, which is going to be that kind of oval shape, which is pretty standard. We also have the round brass silicone bead sliders that have gold and silver, if you wanna go gold and silver. This is a gold kit. So I've got about 15 inches of wire to start with. So there's my little loop at the start, and I've put this little silicone slider over all three. Now, as far as the length of the wire, I doubt seriously I'm gonna use all 15 inches, but I just wanted to make sure I had plenty, and you guys know me. I'm kind of a little bit of a wire waster. So then what you're gonna do is you're going to actually split all three wires apart and just create kind of a trio of your wires. All right, so I've got three wires, and you can see how I kind of split them apart just like that. Yes, that is much, much better. And then I'm just gonna kind of organize this a little bit better like that. Now I'm gonna take three nuggets, and so I'm gonna start with the center wire right here, and I'm just gonna pick a nugget. Doesn't really matter. I'm just gonna go with a piece of malachite, and I'm gonna put two different colors of the nuggets on either side. So I put malachite on one side, so I'm gonna put a neon apatite on another side right here like so. And then the third wire over here, I am going to put a peridot because I thought those three colors just looked fine and fancy together. So those three guys all go down to the end. Let me see if I can show you this, what's kind of going on here. They go to the end and just kind of fit in right there. Now they're gonna snuggle. That's just kind of what's gonna happen. So I'm just gonna pull all three wires back together again, and I'm gonna go back to the end of my wire, and I'm gonna grab another silicone slider, and I am going to slide it onto all three wires. Now sometimes these silicone sliders can be a little bit difficult to get on three wires like that if they're all the same length. So what you can do is you can stagger them if you want to. You can have one that's a little bit longer and two that are a little bit shorter. They're not giving me any trouble today, but I just know that sometimes they do. So then you're just going to kind of snuggle your guys up. See how they kind of snuggle together like that? And then once you kind of get everybody in the place where you want them, you're going to kind of splay your wires out again like so, so that they're separated. See? Cute, right? It's gonna be cute, isn't it? I kind of like this, and it's kind of fun and organic. And so now the only thing I really do to kind of change this up is I put a different stone in the middle every single time. So this time I'm gonna go neon apatite in the center. I'm going to go malachite on one side, and then I'm gonna switch it up here and add a little bit of the golden rutilated quartz on the other side. So it's two of the same beads, one that's a little bit different just to add a little different color on to the piece, if I can find the hole in that one. There it is. And just bring them down again. So they're just gonna kind of snuggle down at the bottom. There's those little snugglers. And I always make sure before I move on that the two side beads are underneath and the middle bead is on top. That's just for consistency. As you're kind of going along, I think it looks a little bit better if you consistently do something. And so the only thing consistent about this is going to be that that middle bead kind of sits on top and the two other beads sit, the side beads sit on the bottom. So because it's so organic, in order to create just a little bit of continuity, that's just the one thing that I do. So then I'm gonna pop another one of these sliders on here. So see how it just kind of goes right on the end and then just pull that slider down towards your beads and push them up to that little slot right there. And so it just kind of creates like these little, I guess, almost marquee-shaped sections with your beads. And you can snuggle that up just a little bit longer or a little bit closer. And then what kind of keeps it in place for the next segment is just to take your wires and just splay them back out again, like so. So see, kind of keeps that little marquee. And you can work it a little bit if you want to pull that down a little tighter, if you want to push those beads in a little bit more, you can kind of work the system, as you will, and then just kind of start bending it into a bracelet shape. Pretty cool. I think it's a really good, somebody said that's a great use of the nuggets. I thought it was a good use of them too, because I'm really getting a chance to show up a lot of different colors of the stones and I'm really getting to use a lot of the nuggets. And we do get a lot of nuggets in this set. So I need things to do with them, you know, I need to know things. And so this is a thing I now know to do. So the only other thing I do as I'm kind of going along is I make sure that I don't consistently put the same color in the center or I don't consistently put the same color on any side. So I just switched up to the Malachite in the center and the Peridot is now on the side here. Let me kind of turn this here just a little bit so you can see what's going on. So now see what I've done here is I've got a Peridot there and I have a Peridot there. So now I'm not going to change that this time, but next segment, I'm going to make sure I don't have a Peridot on the edge. Does that make sense to everybody? Hopefully. Okay, so now I'm back to another slider. So I think this is a good use of our sliders as well because I mean, we have a lot of those sliders in different shapes and sizes and I need some new things, new ideas for them. So this was something that I kind of thought of that I thought would be kind of a cool idea with those. All right, so that's my next little marquee shape section and then I'm just going to open up and open up just like this. And I'm also kind of starting now to shape this into a bangle. So I'll show you the one that I have already done right here. Now I actually have plans to add a little bit of chain here and a clasp on the other side. I just have not done that, but that's kind of where we're headed right here. I'm snuggling the nuggins. That's what I'm doing. That's right. It probably would work with memory wire. It just, I haven't tried that yet, but I bet you, I bet you you're right. All right, so now I told you I was not going to put Peridot on the edge. So maybe I'll put Peridot in the middle. What do you guys think? Shall we go with Peridot in the middle? Peridot belongs in the middle, I think. You know, it should be a star. So we'll do that. And then on the edge, I will do, let's see, I've got a Malachite and then I've got, this segment kind of got a little wonky. I've got a Malachite and then I've got a neon. And so let's do, oh, let's do a golden. Yeah, let's do a golden on this side this time. Golden, I love golden related cords. Did you know that in some cultures they actually consider golden rutilated cords a lucky stone? The more rutiles, the luckier it is. Kind of neat, right? So I swear I'm seeing the hole, but I think I'm just seeing something shining off of the heads of the bead there. There we go. And then I'll put the neon on the other side. And if I'd been paying a little bit more attention, I think I probably would have put some of these kind of more roundy beads in the center, as I did when I was doing my original, but I'm just gonna show you guys kind of what's happening. Some of the spots where I didn't have kind of a larger bead, they just, they snuggled up a little bit more than I wanted them to. I really want each one to kind of look kind of like that, but that's, I mean, that's just kind of, we're on, I'm on, you know, display right now. So as you guys are working with these, try to work with a little bit rounder nugget, like a little fatter nugget, I guess, in the center, so that you get a little bit more of that marquee shape, like I kind of did right there. So just kind of snuggle those guys up like this, and then I'm going to add these on. So this was just, like I said, something new and different, and I think these are pretty, and I think they'll stack up nicely. You could do them all the same color if you wanted to. You don't have to go multicolor. You know me, I'm always going multicolor, but you could go multicolor. You could go all the same color. You could go bicolor. You could do the same color on the outside. You could do all neon apatite on the outside, and all malachite on the inside. I just think there's a lot of different things that you could do with this. I'm gonna put this one in the center now, because I think he's a good kind of roundish nugget. Call him a nuglet, if you will. And then I'm going to put a malachite on this side. Look at me, paying attention to what I'm doing. I don't even know what's happening around here. And then on the other side, I'm going to put a, I'll go peridot. I'm loving on peridot right now. Do you guys love August birthstone peridot? I know black spinel is the alternate. I much prefer the color right now. I'm just kind of into the color of the peridot. I love black spinel. I mean, I don't, I'll always love it. But as a birthstone, I think I would rather have, I would rather have the color of peridot. All right, so there we go. See, oh, that one's perfect. That's exactly how I want them to look. See, the little roundy guy, and it gives it a really good marquee. That one looks fantastic. I'm excited. I'm happy. I'm loving it. Adding on one of these little guys and pulling it down. So this is starting to shape up into my little bangle. Let's see where I am. So I've got about two more segments. If you guys can bear with me for two more segments, then I can show you how to finish it. Do you ever watch one of these shows? You're like, oh my God, is she ever going to get to the end of the bracelet? It's our last little segment. And we're going to put one last, I had exactly the right number of these little silicone sliders here. Just going to pop that on like that. And that's going to be the end, the finishing point of my bracelet. So you can kind of see, like I said, pretty organic. And then what you're going to do is you're just going to do the same thing on this side as you did on the other side. So we're going to take our chain nose plier and I am going to give myself just a little bit of space here and bend this back into a 90 degree angle. So I've taken all the wires, all three of them. I know it seems like a lot, but really it's pretty good. It's not too bad. And just do the same thing you would if it was just one wire. Just wrap it around the bail shaping plier and make sure you use a bail shaping plier because this can be very difficult to do with a round nose plier. Let's turn that a little bit smaller. And then just take your wires and wrap one, two times just like so, just a nice, neat, thick wrap. And you can see, you could just use a jump ring to attach that and add some chain for a little extender or, and then also just a lobster claw clasp I think would be the best thing to add to the other side. And all we really need to do now is press in our ends. And so I'm just pressing those down. Make sure anytime you're cutting wire like that, really take a little extra time to press down those ends. Nobody wants to feel that poking into their skin. So you want to make sure you take a little extra time with that. Now, I think if I made it one longer, I probably could have just made this an open bangle, but I really wanted to add a clasp to it. So that's what I will do a little bit later. But you see, it's pretty flexible. And actually they do kind of just pop on there like that. They look pretty, right? I mean, yeah, you could use, you could wear them. Actually, I don't even know if I have to add another one. I'm pretty close to the right size right there to keep them open, but they're not like, I'm just gonna show you, they're not like super, super stiff. So I think adding a clasp to it would be a smart idea, but pretty, fun, and easy. Ta-da! I like it. I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope you try them out. I hope you get some nuggets and try it. I'll probably, if I bring these out in the next couple of weeks, I'll probably demo this again on the air with a little bit less detail, but I'll show it again. So anyway, this has been fun. Have a fantastic afternoon, guys, and I'll see you again real soon.