Wire wrap jewelry

Video Transcript

" Hi I’m Courtney Gray and I’m going to show you very basic way to do some wire wrapping. This is how we put stones, different gem stones, and different beads into the chains. Either they are already made or you are in the process of already making them. It’s how I connected these briolette here, these amethyst briolette above this piece here. Basically pretty simple stuff, takes a little bit of time but it’s kind of meditational actually, it’s a lot of fun. You would take a wire, this is a twenty six gauge wire, you can buy from your local bead store, slide it through the pre-drilled hole of your gemstone, whatever you choose to use. This is a piece of carnelian. Basically take that wire, bend it up, make a cross out of it, and push it down with your thumb. You’re going to need a couple of tools including your round nose pliers and your flat nose pliers. I usually use the round nose to fold that cross that you’ve made and wrap the smaller, shorter end of that wire around as many times as you choose. So, right after you make your cross, right above the tip of that briolette you will take your round nose pliers, crimp it down to hold it tight and in place and straight where you want it. Take that wire if you want to leave more on that end it’s fine, you can wrap it more times. The way I do it is wrap it once around and a half and snip it on the back of the stone or the least attractive side of the stone. The side you don’t want to show toward the front; snip off that little excess wire. Then what we’re going to do is attach it to the chain, so you need to make a little loop to connect it. Take your round nose pliers, as big as your want that loop the further down the pliers you would go. So if you want a really tiny loop, which is nice, it’s kind of invisible, and you would take that wrap it around the pliers, around the round nose. Pull that around then you basically have a small loop ready to connect to some chain. I’m just going to show you on this piece here, this is a basic rolo chain that you can buy. Slide that through wherever you want it on your chain and pop it through, so then you have, you’re at this point. You have it to where it’s dangling and now you need to wrap the other end around to connect it and snip it off the excess. So you would go ahead and clamp that down if you choose and just hold it down with your fingers. Wrap the rest of the wire around until it connects with that other end that you’re snipped before. Then you take your snips and go ahead and snip it as clean as you can. You usually want to rub your finger over to make sure that it’s not sticking up to where it would catch on something. If it is then you would take your flat nose pliers and crimp the rest of the wire down flush. And then you have your basic wire-wrapped briolette. Can be used for all sorts of design ideas and jewelry making. "