Wire Wrapped Earrings. How to make wire wrapped earrings tutorial step by step. Weaving jewelry from copper wire and beads with your own hands. Wire Wrapped tutorial for beginners.
Wire Wrapped Earrings, which we will make with you today, is a great project for those who are just getting started with wire jewelry.
In this tutorial, you will make simple handmade wire wrapped earrings. It is very easy to make these earrings. The techniques shown in this tutorial can be used to create different jewelry and accessories.
Table of Contents
Wire Wrapped Earrings. Tools and materials.
To get started you will need some wire of any color and a small set of hand tools – fine pliers, round pliers and wire cutters. You will also need a set of sanding paper. If you decide to continue making wire jewelry, then you’ll need additional special tools for working with wire.
To make Wire Wrapped Earrings we need two beads with holes, preferably from natural stone or glass. I took agate beads of about 10 mm each. It will be a perfect choice for our future Wire Wrapped Earrings.
Wire is one of the most important materials for making wire jewelry in this technique.
Copper wire for Wire wrapped jewelry.
Wire comes in different compositions, sizes and hardnesses. So at first, it is very difficult to understand what you need and what wire to start with. Copper wire is the most common and affordable option, so it’s great for beginners.
Natural copper is a popular choice for jewelry making for many reasons. It is beautifully colored and has many possibilities for processing. Natural copper wire can be twisted, flattened, forged, drawn in die plates, heated, melted, brazed, patinated, sanded and polished. Copper is easy to work with and relatively inexpensive to buy.
I always recommend natural copper wire as a great material for beginners who would like to practice working with wire. It gives you great practice before you can move on to the more expensive options – like silver and other precious metals. So, today in our Wire Wrapped Earrings tutorial we will also use copper wire.
I am very fond of copper wire and often make jewelry with it. I use copper wire in almost all of my tutorials.
You can buy natural copper wire at online stores. There you can find copper wire of different thicknesses.
But as for me, I often go to the nearest electrical store. This is the perfect place for buying electrical wires. That’s where I buy copper electrical wires. At home, I cut the wires into about a meter sections and remove the protective layer with a box cutter. It is very convenient to use these sections to make Wire Wrapped Earrings.
That’s where I buy 1mm and thicker wire – at the electrical store. I found 0.4 thin wire in power cables. There’s a lot of it there, enough for many months of work.
I compared the price of the usual electrical copper wire and the one I bought at online stores – the usual electrical wire is much cheaper. But it requires some work – to remove the protective layer. You can use it for any type of Wire Wrapped Jewelry.
In the online stores I buy natural copper wire thickness 0,3 mm; 0,5 mm; 0,6 mm; 0,7 mm; 0,8 mm. The wire should not have any varnish on it!
So as not to confuse you at all, I will explain. For the base – I mostly use 0.8mm thick copper wire, sometimes 1mm and thicker. Thin wire is used for weaving, such as – 0.4mm thick, and less often 0.3mm thick. To start making jewelry, you need to have 1mm thick wire for the base and 0.4mm thick wire for the weaving. This is the most common thickness of copper wire to work with.
How to Make Wire Wrapped Earrings from Wire Step by Step.
For the Wire Wrapped Earrings, we need two pieces of 0.8 mm or 1 mm thick wire about 20 cm each. We will also need two natural stone beads about 10 mm in diameter.
About in the middle, twist the wire using round pliers as shown in the photo.
Using pliers, twist the wire and make a spiral.
Put a bead on the wire and twist the wire around the bead.
Earring pins made of wire with your own hands.
You can make earring pins from copper wire and cover them with nail polish to avoid allergic reactions on the skin.
To make earring pins with your own hands, you can use a special wire to match the color of copper or buy ready-made earring pins of a suitable color.
Grind and polish the tip of the wire. And attach to the earring.
Patination and polishing of copper wire.
I like to patinate my jewelry, to give it a vintage look. To do that, I first patinate the copper and then polish it.
Usually, I patinate copper in ammonia vapor. I buy ammonia in a pharmacy (in Russia). Then I pour the solution into a glass jar with a lid. I hang copper jewelry over the ammonia solution. After some time the copper will darken and get covered with patina. It’s up to you to choose the degree of patination. You can even give it an absolute black color.
Take the decoration out of the jar. I polish the copper wire with a grinder, using felt tips. I use special polishing pastes for polishing.
Also, I use special ready-made patination solutions, which I buy at online stores.
Copper tends to darken with time. To avoid this, you can cover the entire piece with a special colorless varnish. So Wire Wrapped Earrings are done.
Check out similar Wire wrap tutorials:
Wire wrapped tutorials PDF Valeriy Vorobev
Do you love making wire jewelry as much as I do? I’ve been making jewelry from wire for nearly 15 years, and I didn’t want to keep this knowledge to myself, so I write wire jewelry tutorials sharing what I’ve learned.
Valeriy Vorobev
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