Wire wrapping pendant tutorials. Pendant made of copper wire and stones with your own hands. Step by step tutorial for beginners from Valeriy Vorobev.
Today we are going to make such a nice pendant together with you. The pendant is not difficult to make. The lesson is good for beginners to practice making weavings and bending them around a stone.
What do we need for the work?
Table of Contents
Wire wrapping pendant tutorials. What wire should we choose? Copper wire for a pendant.
I almost always use natural silver, copper, brass, bronze, nesilber or melchior wire for my jewelry.
Copper wire is my favorite material. And not only because it’s the cheapest material, although that’s important too. I like the natural color of copper. I like to change the color patinating the whole piece afterwards.
I patinate copper with special solutions, I buy ready-made solutions in stores. Sometimes I use ammonia, which you can buy in drugstores. I make the copper wire look aged using ammonia vapor. I hang the piece of jewelry over the ammonia solution for a while.
Then I polish the copper wire. I use hand grinders with special felt tips. I use polishing pastes for polishing.
Over time, natural copper becomes darker. To prevent this, I often cover the whole product with a special colorless varnish.
Today I will use two types of copper wire. The thickness of the first type is 1 mm and hardness is medium. This wire will be used for a base. The second type should be soft and the thickness should be 0.4 mm. This wire will be used for the weaving.
You can use any wire of the following thickness and hardness.
Wire wrapping pendant tutorials. What tools are needed to make a wire pendant.
We will need a small set of hand tools, which you can buy in an online store. Even the cheapest set will do. Take my word for it – to start working with wire and making jewelry with stones you do not need a lot of tools!
I strongly recommend using rubber tipped pliers. It is very easy to work with weavings, clamp the wire, bend the wire. The wire is very easy to damage using the usual pliers. It will take time and your effort to repair the defect. If you use rubber tipped pliers you will never damage your product.
A stone for a pendant.
I used a flat agate bead with a hole to make the pendant. The size of the stone is 30 x 40 x 6 mm. I will give you advice – it is much better to use volcanic stones (solid) for your jewelry. Other stones, such as sedimentary rocks, can be damaged while working. I do not recommend using them – don’t risk, otherwise, you will waste your time.
Wire wrapping pendant tutorials
Prepare 4 pieces of wire. The thickness should be 1 mm and the length should be about 40-50 cm.
Weave together all the wires approximately in the middle. Use any method of weaving.
Check out my Free wire basic weaving course.
Make a loop for a cord or chain and bend the wire. One of the outermost wires should be threaded through the hole in the stone as shown in the photo.
Continue weaving the three wires. You can use any weaving technique.
Bend the weaving as shown in the photo.
Bend the four weaved wires at the bottom of the pendant.
And weave them together with the wire threaded through the hole. You will get a weaving of 5 wires.
Pay attention to the weaved three wires which are at the top of the pendant. They should be bent around the stone neatly and tightly.
Separate the wire. Put copper beads on a single wire. It will look pretty. Weave the two remaining wires together using any technique you like. Bend them around the stone, placing them in rows.
On the back side of the pendant, attach the ends of the wire by the loop. Bend them inside.
I have a pretty long wire left on the back side. I divided the weaving into 2 and 3 wires. I once again bent the weaving of two wires around the stone.
Then I fastened it on the back side.
I weaved the remaining three wires together and fastened them to the loop of the pendant.
I don’t have even one end of the wire left on the outside. Now the wire won’t cling to your clothes and the piece of jewelry won’t scratch your skin.
I made the copper wire look older – aged it (patinated). I polished it and coated it with a special varnish so that the copper would not darken later on.
For the pendant, I added a copper chain with a copper lock.
That’s all for now. Good luck with your work!
Also, check out Wire wrapping pendant tutorials:
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