DIY Jewelry 1 Wire 1 Bead Bracelet Tutorial

Let's make something beautiful today. So one night last week as I was drifting off to sleep, this very simple, yet not as simple as you would think it is, design just formed in my mind. It literally was like electrified lines. When it pulled out and then it swirled around and connected and I'm like, well, that'll be a great little link. I'm gonna show you what I did, what worked and what didn't work. So you can achieve this great little link. I learned a lot through this. I experimented a lot and finally came up with something that I think works. So the magic of this is that it's just one piece of wire and one bead makes this whole complete link. I didn't wanna have a wire for the bead and then separate kind of horseshoe things that linked. I wanted to make the whole thing from one piece of wire. So since I mentioned the wire, we are using 18 gauge for this whole thing. I will show you how to do a clasp. I haven't decided what I'm gonna do, probably experiment. And I usually use 16 gauge for a clasp. So if you wanna stick around for the clasp, get your 16 gauge out. If you wanna stick around for the ear wires, I'm using 20 gauge for that as well. But 18 gauge is the main, you know, the workhorse of this link. As for the tools and supplies, gotta have some very tiny chain nose pliers. Sometimes I used round nose and of course your cutters. I use these a lot as well. If you want to bust out a bunch of your cuts of wire, I found these helpful as well because we don't actually need the wires flush cut when we're working through the link. You do that in your finishing parts of this. Keep your ruler out. That is going to help us measure where we are going to make our cuts and bends and things like that. And speaking of hammers, I've got a brand new hammer. Now it has seen many a decades because this was my father-in-law's, probably his great uncle's as well. And it's used to remove dents from cars. So this is what I'm gonna be using. And it's got a great domed edges, softened edges. And then it has this wonderful pointy end that we are gonna use to put some texturizing on these links. So I'm excited to use this. I also got this tiny little baby ball peen hammer. Come on. And then I got this whopper as well. Because I was at Harbor Freight and I told my husband I needed a ball peen hammer. He's like, what? Don't buy a ball peen hammer. And he took me to the garage and showed me about 13 ball peen hammers. So that's what I chose. So grab your cutters and some 18 gauge and let's make this wonderful little link. For each link, you need four inches of 18 gauge. So I went ahead and I pre-cut a few pieces. Now you have to decide what kind of bead are you going to use? You see that I have round beads and I have these little square flat beads. And first that needs to fit the 18 gauge and you have to decide if you want it to be nice and flat or having it round. Cause the one thing I noticed is as a bracelet, it sits off your skin. It sits off your wrist or whatever it might be. And, but it looked really nice as earrings. It had that dimensional quality as it would be hanging from your ear. Very simple and elegant. But as for sitting along your wrist, if you want to make a bracelet, you might want to find some type of a flat bead that might work the best. So it's more slinky. So I've got everything here. I've got some jump rings that are going to bringing this all together. Another pro and con about your bead selection is that the round bead is very forgiving. Oh, how about a flat coin bead? Why didn't I think about that? A flat coin, that's probably going to be your best bet. I don't know why I didn't grab that because the square edge, if you use a square bead, you're going to see if it is off kilter in here, the tiniest little bit. So anything round is going to be super forgiving in case this middle section is skewed just a little bit. Cause sometimes every now and then I would do it, it wouldn't be straight across. It would be kind of set off like that. And you couldn't really tell because I was using a round bead, but then it happened to me in one of these square beads and I could tell it was skewed because of those straight edges. So stick with something round. I'm just now realizing that. Stick with something round. If you want something with some dimension, go with a round bead. If you want something that needs to lay against your wrist, choose a flat coin bead. That's going to be the best. And as long as it fits your 18 gauge, you're good to go. Bear with me while I've got my ruler turned the other way. I'm just trying to get it all positioned in this way. So what I'm doing is I've got my eight millimeter bead lined up on a centimeter. I've got as many wires together as possible because that's going to save you some time. And we're going to mark some places where we're going to make bends. And I'm going to go out from the speed. It's centered on a centimeter. And I'm going to go out half on either side. See how I'm going to the half a centimeter on either side. And I'm just going to make a mark along all three of those wires at one time that saves a lot of time. I don't think I got that one well enough. Here we go. You've got one of our marked pieces of wire. Grabbing some, your chain nose, some flat nose, whatever would work best for you. And we talked about this a lot last week in last week's video that you don't cover your mark, just position your pliers just to the outside of your bend mark. And we're going to make a 90 degree bend. And now it's hard to see it because no permanent marker lasts anymore, but that mark is right on the bend. And that's what you want. Take your bead and slide that on in between those two marks. And now I have my, this first arm that we bent, it is hanging down. And we're going to do the same thing with this arm, except we're going to bend it upwards. Same thing, pliers just to the outside of the mark, hold everything firmly, and then slowly just turn that upwards. And you've got this going on. One thing you want to look for is make sure that this is nice and straight across. It does not look nice and straight across. Some little thing that every now and then I had to do, and I'm going to show you through every little thing that I had to work through to make this work. As I took my tweezer nose, I took my flat nose, and then pushing them more, push that line more straight across. Now that this part looks really good to you, do not move on until you get it the way you want it. Turn this, because I'm right-handed, I want to take this piece and pull it over to make one of our first little bends here. So I put the wire upwards on my left side, and then I'm holding this part firmly, and we're going to, as we are pulling around, we're pushing in as well, to make this kind of like little gumdrop loop, bend, however you want to say it. And then when it gets to about this point, I kind of hold this little area level with this bend here, so I can only bend just this wire that's hanging out. You can do that with pliers as well. You can get a little something like that. If you've worked your loop, if you've worked your bend, and it's kind of, it's bending too much over like that, you know, it's more slanted instead of a nice bend, one thing I was doing is you can just hold that, bring it back into straight, straight up, and then you can bend the rest of this a little better. Sometimes I had to do that, sometimes I didn't. It just depended on how the wire was responding. Let's flip around and do the other one. Same movement. I'm kind of just touching the end of this wire, and I'm holding all this firmly and supporting right in here with this finger to make the loop. This does require some eyeballing, but I know you can do it. And then again, either with pliers or just hold it with your finger, I'm gonna lock that and then pull this arm the rest of the way so that it's even, or just about, with this bend over here. And the reason we left a gap on either side of this bead is we're leaving a little tiny gap for this wire to come down in and make a loop, just as you see on these. Slips right down in that little gap, comes around and makes a loop towards the back. All right, let's trim these wires. It's a little weird to see because I've got it underneath the ruler, but I'm lining up this, the wire that goes through the bead with a centimeter and trimming to half a centimeter. Being careful, I'm not cutting yet. I'm just grabbing it because I know it's probably touching the other one. So once I've got it there, then I can just trim that. And then once you do this a lot, you get really familiar with what a half a centimeter looks like, and you don't need to measure anymore. You get really good at eyeballing things the more you do. Half a centimeter for this side as well. Need to make sure I'm not cutting that other wire first. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Look, look what I just did. Okay, I didn't cut through. We're gonna keep it. We're gonna just move it on. Oh my gosh, I hope I didn't cut, cut, cut that to the point of no return. It'll be all right. We're gonna make it work. All right, so now you've got this little thing going on. Now this one I made for whatever reason, these side wings, the side loops, are a little bit longer than what I was making for whatever reason. I did have that from the center point of the bead outwards was only, you know, to the next centimeter. But for some reason, these got, became longer. And that's an option is to work with that, come up with what you think works the best, looks the best, how wide or the separation from the bead and these outer loops, the outer wings. Let's see what this looks like. I don't think I've made one this extended. So might have, this might work really well for an earring because you know how the longer a link is, the longer it feels just like bricks going around your wrist. So this might be really good for earrings. It's really extending those side wings out. I would suggest keeping it a little tighter if you wanna make bead links. What I'm doing now is with my tweezer nose, we're gonna press this little arm, this little extension of wire right down in that gap so that it's coming out and sticking out so that we can come around, turn, reach down in there. That's why some tweezer noses and really thin nose pliers is really gonna help here. Grabbing just the very, very end of that and make the tiniest loop that you can and try your best to make your loop sizes match because this is essentially using up wire that's making up the side wing. So you want them to match the same amount going on. Let's flip to the other side and push in the other side. And one thing I forgot to mention on the other one is hold this, that will also help you keep this same amount of distance on either side. You're really, you're keeping open this distance between the bead and this outer edge because if you're just holding here and you're making the loop, you are bound and determined to pull in this loop and then the one will be bigger than the other. So hold that kind of more right in here, not so much on the bead. Just doing the same thing on the other side. I'm gonna press those two loops, those little extensions against the bead to tuck them in tight. So you've got a little something like this and it's gonna need some fine tuning, I will say. And the one thing that really came in handy that I mentioned when we went over the tools is that I used some big pliers to really cinch in the sides and really press them in against the bead. And we can do a little reshaping here just by taking some pliers and adjusting the shape. We're gonna do some hammering as well. So we're just gonna do just some minor shaping right now because the hammering is gonna make everything go out of whack anyway. I love that, don't you love that? You're like, oh, it's so pretty, I got it so wonderful. And then you go to hammer something and you're like, oh my goodness, I gotta adjust that all over again. Slide over your bench block and we're gonna do some hammering. I get to use this wonderful new hammer. I'm gonna use this flat side to flatten. Imagine that. Flip and do the other side. Now we're gonna use this, the ball peen side. This one's more pointy. I really like that for this skinny wire here and there. And put some texture in there. Now we've got something that's got a little texture and light going on, but it looks like that. Look at this. And so I'm holding it level on the bottom, but it's definitely crooked on the top. So easy fix. Just grab some, your flat nose, chain nose, whatever, but you need two of them. So you can definitely see how crooked it is there. And with two of them, all we're gonna do is just really line up the pliers until their gaps are sitting on top of each other. And then you know you've got it all straight. See how they're sitting on top. Nice and straight again. And just any final touches, anything that you need to flatten out or you need to reshape and you are just good to go. It's just really clean and modern, I thought. Something else I did to play with the shape is that I took some chain nose pliers, put it inside that loop, our little side wings, and pulled out just to kind of make it even more, ever so slightly, just gently pull that open for a different look. Pretty sweet. Really, really sweet. See how those simple little tweaks changed the look of that and really made it, it's almost like, you know, a bumblebee. A little fat bumblebee. Really sweet. I need to do this one more time to make this a full bracelet. So let's get our piece of wire out and make one more. See if we run into any issues that we can work out together. Starting with our same move, make that 90 degree bend, slip on your, I could tell as soon as I picked that up that wasn't gonna go on there. Slip on that bead right in between the markers, bend up, so you've got this going on. Now I already can tell that this line in between my beads is not straight, so I'm gonna adjust my wires so that it is straight. And you see how I'm doing, you can do it the other way with the pliers, or you can just keep bending the wires so that it is straight in there. I'm gonna see if I can get a little bit more to match these. This one, for whatever reason, I don't know if I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, maybe not so far out. I will say, you do wanna give yourself some of that breathing room, because the tighter in you get to the bead, it's just harder to work with. I will say that, so make sure you give yourself some room to breathe from the outset of your bead here. And we're just doing the same movements. Let's pull that in so that those wires are level. So already this is slightly smaller, which is what I wanted. Yeah, yeah, that's more like I originally had. Turn and make the same movement with the other arm. It's a little bit tighter than I wanted. This angle is a little too pointy right here, so I'm gonna see if I can just adjust that a little bit so it's not so pointy. I rounded it out just slightly. I'm going for that gumdrop look. And let's trim to our half a centimeter here. Press that wire in if you can, so it's sticking out the back, or you can just reach down in there and get it from the backside. Hold this so you maintain that separation between this and the bead, because when you're pulling to make the loop, it will want to pull in and you will lose some of that shape of your wire. And then press that loop close. Tiny, small as you can get it. Same deal, do whatever you gotta do to get that wire through that gap. Poke it through, reach through the back, whatever. Hold this so you are maintaining that separation and make this little loop small as you can. You wanna make sure that you try to make your loops match as much as you can, too. You don't wanna use more wire on one side than the other, and then your loops don't match. And then we can come in, I'm coming in from the backside, and I'm going to squeeze those end of the loops against the bead. And I just mushed my loop a little bit. Just making very small adjustments to the shape here, because I jacked it up a little bit. And that might happen to you. It happens to me a lot. And you see what I'm doing? I'm just taking my pliers and I'm going along, I'm coming in from the backside, because it works better to come in that way. And I'm just going along this shape. And I'm reforming it. And don't worry if you got any mars on your wire, because remember we're gonna hammer. And anything that kinda slips or you, you know, whatever, it gets messed up, we can just make it more organic. We can make it more forgiving with the hammering and texturizing, and they're just gonna look like lovely, modern, organic shapes. I really, really love that. There's something that I see a lot in people that melt down their scraps of metal, whether it be silver or whatever, most mostly silver and gold, but they melt it all down and they just make these organic shapes for jewelry and like nuggets hanging on for pendants. And I just love, I love that. I don't need things to be so uniform. I don't mind the things that don't quite match. That is kind of who I am. And we're back to hammering this flat a little bit. Now that we've hammered, it's gonna get a little bit out of shape, and that is fine. Same as we did before. You can tell that it's crooked, and we're gonna slip on our other chain nose pliers and just really match up the little gaps of the jaw of the pliers so that they're sitting on top of each other in parallel. That's how you know you got it nice and straight. Now if we need to do any more adjusting, everything is still in play. Just because you finished hammering doesn't mean you can't go back in there and do any more adjusting if you wanna adjust the shape. Seriously, just go in and give little tiny squeezes that will adjust the shape. I'm really liking that. That is just adorable. I think this is a really perfect length for bracelets or whatever. Let's see what the full length is. Maybe about two centimeters, and then you'd have jump rings in between connecting them. And speaking of jump rings to connect, let's do that. I did already pre-cut with a saw my jump rings here. Let me tell you what. I would show you how I do that, but I'm not an expert. I struggle with the saw, but really, if you want really good flush cuts on your jump rings, the saw is really the best way to do that. It really is no comparison when you look at the cut from a saw and the cut from your flush cutters. I don't know if you can see here. I joined each one of these links with two jump rings. I just really felt like it would give it a little more stability and a little extra something, you know? Why not? And then we're going to do the clasp for this as well. And I'll do ear wires as well. I mean, I showed you the earrings. So many times in my early videos, I would do something and it would have an element to it, like the ear wires for those earrings, but then I wouldn't do them. And I'm like, well, I wanted to know how to do the ear wires. So if I show it to you as an example, I'm going to show you how to do it. I try to include everything, except we're not doing the sawing today. Oh my gosh. I just, I'm not comfortable yet. I don't feel confident yet to show you how to do that. So that's why I'm not doing it. I'm getting there. I'm getting better. Should we see how long that is? I think that's going to be okay. Let's make an infinity clasp. I think it's going to echo the shape. It's going to be minimal. And just very simple, effective as well. And I'm going to cut three inches. And using my bail pliers. You didn't think you were going to see it today, did you? Mm-hmm. So I am going to use the seven millimeter bail to make one of these loops. And I've got it down here, kind of, let's see, like it's about an inch, an inch to the edge here. And I'm going to press evenly around both sides. Bringing that in, crisscross that like that. Take off your pliers and reposition that seven millimeter bail in this 90 degree open angle over here. And then all this leftover wire is going to come around and just make sure that it kind of goes under, under that loop over there. And then you've got it like that. One of the ends is sitting on top. The other one is on the other side. And then you can just take some chain nose pliers and this little end here is going to come and we're going to bend it back and give a slight curve so that it sits in that little opening and kind of butts up against this outer loop here. We're going to trim in just a minute, don't worry. And do the same thing for this side. Right where that cross point is. That's where you'll make your bend to make it sit along that outer edge of the loop. And then we will trim. This is all really what looks good to you as well. Push it out to the side a little bit and what the world, how am I supposed to do that with the handle? And then really clean up that so it's not sharp or pokey at all. Let's do some hammering too to kind of make it match. Yes. All right, so now that we've got our little clasp that just kind of blends in almost perfectly, I want it to sit in line with the link. So I need to put a little jump ring in here. This is my fancy bag of jump rings. What you think? To get it to go the other way and I see one. No, not that one. Then we're going to slip that in there and attach our hook. All right, so that gets our hook on there, but sitting in the direction that we want it to sit. Now, the other problem is we don't have anything on the other side. So I need to go back to my handy dandy bag, huh? And I'll put a hoop, I'll put a jump ring on this other end. Now, really ideally, you want to solder that and I am learning little by little. I'm getting better and better. So when I perfect it, I will show you how that works. Really will help you feel more confident when you're putting jump rings on things and you want to make sure you know it's not going to come undone. And this should come right on around, slip in that loop and still lay nice and flat. And like I mentioned in the beginning, ideally, if you really want this bracelet to lay really nice and flat on your wrist, use some type of coin bead and a round coin bead is going to be your most forgiving. That's just really cool. I love that simplicity of it. It really shows off the bead. I think maybe this is a link that really shows off the bead. Yes, I think so. And then it really worked well for earrings. I love that. I'm going to be wearing these today for sure. Let's make a really quick ear wire. I've got two inches of 20 gauge. I'm going to use the two millimeter bail on my pliers. Right at the end of the wire, you're going to slowly roll back until the end of the wire touches the main wire once again. Recently, I've been loving to use the nine millimeter bail to make the part that goes in your ear or sits in your ear. So what you're going to do is take that loop, pull it through the pliers so that it won't come any further. It's locked in. Then you want to make sure that it's level. Press around until the end of that wire without fuzz comes around and meets that first loop once again. Keep your pliers just like that in your hands. Grab the end of that wire and just bring it back against the nine millimeter bail. And there you have the cutest little curvy sweet. You can trim that tail a little bit if you want. Take a moment and just make sure it's nice and strong. My hammering. And then flatten out that edge. Open that loop to the side and then you can slide on your brand new little link that makes a lovely earring that goes along with your bracelet. So cute. And even though it can be a little tricky to get the lines and the loops and the hoops and all that to line up, I think when you're hammering it and you texture it is going to give it you some freedom to have it not absolutely perfect. Whenever you're making something and it's not coming out perfectly, just hammer it and texturize it. And then it will be absolutely lovely and handmade. So I hope you try this. Let me know if you have any issues and if you have any questions. I'll do my best to help you out. Thanks again. I always look forward to Tutorial Tuesday. I look forward to sharing time with you, just hanging out, talking, having a few laughs. And thank you for liking and sharing and commenting and hyping and all that good stuff. It helps to keep the channel growing. And as we grow this group of wonky wire workers. Well, stay safe. Have a great week. And I'll see you next week where we make something beautiful together. Am, what am I saying? I just don't, I really, my brain is befuddled this morning. Help me Lord, be enough to. Not to worry, I will just screw it up. Devin, what? Don't work. Why is this even in there? Come on, yo. Who do you love? Who do you need? Come on, yo, come on now.