Wire wrapped crystal pendant. How to make wire wrapped crystal jewelry. Wire wrapped crystal tutorial for beginners.
Today we are going to create a pendant out of copper wire and crystal. The pendant is not difficult to make, the lesson is suitable for beginners as well as for experts in this craft.
For the work, we need a minimum set of hand tools.
I strongly recommend using nylon jaw pliers. You can use them to work with the weaving and may not be scared to damage the wire.
I use 1mm natural copper wire for the base and 0.4mm for the weaving. You can also use 0.8 mm for the base and 0.3 mm for the weaving.
For this pendant, you can use any wire – any composition and any color. Stick only to the recommendations for wire thickness. This is the most important in making the wire wrapped crystal pendant.
We will need three pieces of 1 mm thick wire 30-40 cm long. Everything will depend on the size of your pendant. You should always have a lot of thin wire in stock.
The quartz crystal was purchased in China. The crystal is tinted. The hole in the crystal is drilled and this hole is very small. Only thin wire can go through. In my case, the crystal will be fixed with 0.4 mm wire.
If in your case, a thick wire can go through the hole, then take advantage of this. Then you don’t have to use a thin wire to fix the crystal. Simply put the wire through the hole in the stone and place the second wire around the crystal from the back. The third wire will be wrapped around the crystal from the front side. Weave 3 wires together on each side of the crystal.
In my case, the hole is small, only a thin wire can go through.
Wire wrapped crystal pendant tutorial for beginners.
Bend all three wires approximately in the middle and make the shape of the crystal. One wire should be on the back side and two on the front side. Bend so that the crystal is placed between the wires.
Hold a long piece of 0.4 mm thin wire in the middle and weave three wires together on one side of the crystal.
Put the other end of the thin wire through the hole, loop it around the wire and put it back through the hole. That is how we will fix the crystal. As I told you before, if you have a big hole, just put the thick wire through the hole.
After fixing the crystal with a thin wire, weave the three wires in the other direction using any weaving method. The most difficult work in making the wire wrapped crystal pendant is done.
Use nylon-tipped pliers to create good weaving. I usually use two kinds of nylon-tipped pliers. One pair of pliers has hard tips and another one has softer tips. But I use hard tips when weaving. You can see this a lot in my video tutorials.
The pliers with the softer tips I mostly use for bending the weavings.
Now we need to bend the weaving into a circle. I usually bend it with my hands. You can help yourself with the nylon-tipped pliers. At the point where you have the two weaving ends meeting each other at the top of the circle, you need to stitch them together. In the video below, I will show how to do it. It shows the whole process of making wire wrapped crystal pendant.
Then weave the weavings in different directions. As you can notice I have changed the weaving pattern. Remember the principle of assembling the pendant – it should be same throughout the whole work. But it shouldn’t stop you from using different weaving patterns at your discretion.
You can learn different ways of weaving in my free course – “Free wire basic weaving course”.
First, we bend the weaving on one side and attach (sew) it to the wire on the crystal. This already looks like a cool wire wrapped crystal pendant.
Bite off the excess wire, make rings on the ends of the wire.
On the other side of the pendant, bend the weaving in the same way and fasten it to the wire. Cut off the excess wire and bend pretty rings.
Make a ring out of thick wire for a chain or cord.
I like to patinate the wire and then polish it. I use ammonia, sulfuric liver or special patination solutions for this purpose.
After patinating the copper wire, I polish it. I use a grinder with special attachments. I use polishing pastes for polishing copper. To prevent the copper from darkening, I sometimes coat it with a special colorless varnish.
Add a chain or cord to the pendant.
The wire wrapped crystal pendant is ready. You can wear the pendant, give it as a gift or sell it.
You can use all my lessons and create jewelry based on my design! But please reference me as the author. If possible, please share the link to my blog. Thank you!!!
Valeriy Vorobev
VIDEO
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Wire wrapped tutorials PDF Valeriy Vorobev
