How to wire jewelry making.

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How to wire jewelry making. Pendant wire wrapping tutorial free. How to wire wrapping stones for beginners. Valeriy Vorobev.

Today I will tell you how to make a pendant of copper wire and stone with your own hands.

Table of Contents

How to wire jewelry making. What kind of wire to use for jewelry making with stones.

I normally use 1mm (18 ga) medium wire for the base, and 0.4mm (26 ga) soft wire for the weaving.

I mostly use a natural wire (copper, brass, bronze, silver, nickel silver and melchior) for my jewelry. Natural wire can be flattened, twisted, soldered, melted, patinated and polished. If you have just begun your creative journey and want to know how to wire jewelry making – I strongly recommend you use natural wire as well.

Today to make a pendant with a stone, we will use 0.8 mm thick copper wire (20 ga) for the base and 0.3 mm thick copper wire for the weaving. The 0.3mm (28 ga) thin wire must be soft otherwise it will be springy. In this case, it may be difficult to weave the 0.8mm base wire.

Working with 0.8mm and 0.3mm wire is easier and harder at the same time than working with 1mm and 0.4mm wire.

If you are visually impaired, have your glasses ready. It is quite difficult to make quality weavings from such thin wire.

When making jewelry, please note that when using thin wire, weaving frames are not as rigid as made of 1mm and 0.8mm wire. It is necessary to bind (stitch) weavings together for the durability of the whole jewelry.

The basic 0.8 mm wire (unlike the 1 mm wire) can easily be deformed during the weaving process, which makes it difficult to produce straight weavings. But don’t worry – I will help you understand how to wire jewelry making in details.

On the other hand, a thin weaving is easy to bend by hand. You can make almost any shape from the finished weaving. You can make incredible beautiful weaving patterns for your jewelry.

For my jewelry pieces, I often make weavings of 1 mm and 0.8 mm thick wire, and add weavings of 0.8 and 0.3 mm thick wire to them. Weavings made of wire of different thicknesses will look harmoniously in one jewelry piece with one stone.

Pendant stone.

I used a flat jasper bead. The stone has a hole, into which a 0,8 mm thick wire can fit.
Usually, for my jewelry I use natural stones of volcanic origin, which reduces the risk of damaging the stone during work. If you need some more life hacks on how to wire jewelry making – bear with me and I’ll tell you everything.

Tools for creating wire and stone jewelry.

To make such a pendant out of copper wire and stone, you do not need a lot of tools. A small set of hand tools will do.

I strongly recommend buying pliers with silicone tips (Nylon Jaw Pliers) for working with wire.

Pendant wire wrapping tutorial free.

We will need four pieces of 0.8 mm thick wire, about 50 cm long. You should always have a large stock of 0.3 mm thin wire.

It was not my intention to create a detailed lesson. In fact, I wanted to introduce you to the technique of weaving thin wire, so that you can see the creation of real jewelry made of 0.8mm and 0.3mm wire.
And yet, the pictures are quite detailed, so you can easily make a similar pendant out of stone and wire.

Bend one wire at a right angle. Then, thread a flat bead on it. About midway through, start weaving four wires in any weaving technique.

Discover Basic weaves to use with one, two, three and four… wire frames. Learn how to weave wire in my free tutorial!

Weave in both directions.

Next, bend the finished weavings around the stone.

Next – weave, bend – and again weave and bend.

Where possible, staple (sew) the upper and lower weavings together.

Make a loop for a cord or chain.

It is not necessary to repeat my patterns exactly – you can create your own, use your imagination!

On the reverse side, bend the ends of the wires and attach them (sew) to weavings.

In the photo, don’t look for the single wire sticking out from the top of the pendant. I couldn’t find a use for it and just cut it off and hid it behind the weaving.

It turned out like this.

I like to patinate and then polish the copper wire.

I patinated the copper in ammonia vapor and polished it. To prevent the copper from darkening over time, you can coat the entire pendant with a special colorless varnish. I hope you now understand better how to wire jewelry making – check out my other tutorials.