Tips for Making Loops for Handcrafted Jewelry

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Ella Seltzer for Expert Village. Now we are going to start working on the necklace by connecting the flower pieces together. You take your looped head pin and you take your crystal and you insert the crystal onto the pin, like this. Now in order, the idea is to create another loop on the other side of the crystal and in order to do this you take your flat nose pliers and grasp the pin firmly and allow about a little less than a centimeter of space, probably like half a centimeter. You want it to end up being the same length as this little loop here and in order to do that you have to take the pin and bend it at a right angle like this. So this is the first stage of creating the loop. And then with your wire cutters, you want to cut off the excess wire so that you have a right angle and that the height from the end of the crystal to the end of the pin is the same as the length the other way, and cut it like so. Okay so then you take your needle nose pliers and you grasp the end of the wire very firmly and using your wrist you make a very slow movement in order to make it into a loop, just twisting it around you end up with a loop like this. Loops take quite a bit of practice but they are an essential skill in jewelry making. So if at the first time you don't succeed, keep trying until you get the best loops you can make. "