go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas! hi this is megan with beadaholique.com andtoday i want to show you how to make a wire wrapped gemstone
silver flat snake chain necklace, bracelet link so this is what the link looks like this is what the bracelet looks like
you can see it's just these links the jump rings and a clasp there i'm going to show you how to do the the hook and bar clasp in another video for this one i'm going to show you how to make the link, the basic component ofthe bracelet
so what you going to need is a bead. i'm using a lentil shaped bead. you don't have to use a gemstone. you could use anyone lentil shapebead but it should be like a pillow bead it's like a round mostly flat disk that's the shape that i'm going to use for this. you couldprobably use an oval
i don't see why you couldn't and then i'm using craft wire in two different sizes. i have an eighteengauge and i have a twenty-four gauge the tools that i'm going to use arenice sharp flush cutters a pair of nylon pliers round nose pliers and then
and also have a pair of regular chain nose pliers you want to be careful that you don't ding up your wire and mark it up with these you want to use the nylon wheneverpossible but every once and a while so you need to get a better grip. i have these also the first thing that i'm gonna do is i will need to start with fourlengths of the eighteen gauge wire to make a frame of my link
and i want each one to be about fourinches long. so i'm gonna start with one piece so that i canstraighten it as one piece i'm just gonna cut one piece that's anywhere between sixteen inches and a couple of feet. i always use a lot of extra wire when i'm going wire wrapping and just because i'd rather be safe than sorry this is kind of a lot. i'm going to go ahead and cut this in half into two pieces when you're gonna work with wire you cut your piece
a little longer then you need and useround nose pliers to just put a loop on the ends hold on to that loop take your nylon jaw pliers and straighten your wire out it can be a real headache to work with wireas it is if you're not used to it but working with wire that's notstraightened out is twice as hard and do the second piece then you're gonna cut off
the loop and be careful when you cut thicker wire pieces can fly you want to wear protection and justhold onto things and be careful now i'm going to cut these two pieces in half to give me the four pieces that i want to work with
next i'm going to cut a piece of twenty-four gauge wire and i want two pieces that are about four or five incheslong then i'm going to take my four pieces of the eighteen gauge wire and you're going to pair them. you need two pair so
i'm just trying to make sure that they'restraight as possible so that they line up nicely then you're going to take once set of two wires hold it together near the middle, takeyour twenty-four gauge wire very firmly wrap your twenty-four gauge wire around eighteen gauge wire
wrap it around about six or seven times you want your wraps to be very snug completely close together, all the way against eachother so there are no spaces. get it around there a good amount of times. so i would say probably six or seven bring your access to the back
use your flush cutters to cut those wires use the flat side, of course, againstyour piece so that those pieces aren't sharp then you will use your nylon jaw pliers push those ends down give a goos squeeze to flatten it then you can also
squeeze it together and then it will move a little. move itto the middle and then you just going to repeat that with the second pair then you take your two little bundles here and what you have is you have the wire that's gonna go around the edge of the bead and the wire that'sgoing to go up across the face the bead
is what each pair is so first make sure that your smaller wire wrap is right in the middle take the top wire and just gently withyour fingers here in the middle bend these in and you wanna make sure that your clean edge of your wire wrap sits on theoutside so that your edges are in the
inside so this wires here have to go-around and go up and do some wrappingaround so probably wanna make them about five inches on those because i think i might have more here than five or six even you want to have some extra
i don't think that's quite four inches then you're gonna take your fingers and just bend this wire in give yourself a nice curve as you can see this wholething is not exact. every piece is not exactly the same that's what i kinda gives it a handcrafted kind of a look
you don't have to be super worried about every single piece looking identical just make them all close enough and pretty and bend all these in then it needs to have a little bit of spacethis way to go on top of the bead
hold the joint and just kind of bend it up a little and then you're gonna need to shape the bottom wire to go around the edge of the bead and this is alittle tricky to hold onto but hold it the best you can since it's totally round it doesn'tmatter where the holes are. if you're using an oval you'll need to make sure yourholes stay parallel to
the wire hold that onto the side and just gently bend around on both sides then make sure it fits in there right you want you're wire wraps to sit against edge. you don't want to it to sit flatlike this check it out, see how it's looking the other side
again since it's symmetrical i can do it the same way if you're doingsomething that's not you might want to flip it over and make sure that you go under your topwire when you bend it you don't want it to start off tangled up they will move out of your way if you need tomove them and if they've moved off centered go ahead and move it
back to the middle move it a little bit okay now we're going to attach our frame to our bead. cut yourself anice piece of the twenty four gauge wire. start withabout a foot. again it is extra but i don't wanna run out want to start over put that wire right through the hole in the bead
then you're gonna take one of your framed pieces go ahead and move that top part out of yourway for right now your frame piece on so that the wirewrapping is directly in the center of the side and you're going to wrap this wire around and pull it nice and tight
back and up and then you want to make sure that youpull the slack down so that this doesn't have extra space here to keep it nice and snug pull it down and then you're gonna wrap the bottom one as well and pull that tight and i will move back and forth this way atthis point that's fine you just want to make sure that it's tight this way
and you're going to take the other side we're gonna put it behind the first and you want to bring the top legs up so they don't get the way and you're gonna put these onesin between the two prongs here should be like
and the two ontop should be above on topof the other ones so this one is to the back again it can be kinda tricky, try to keepthe bent legs out of the way and try to keep the wire wrap bundle right in the centeron the side there now you're gonna take your wire make sure you're holding it right upagainst the other one there so that there's nota gap this way
your going to wrap that around that just like we did before right around like that so now that's gonna hold it on but notstill, so be careful that it doesn't move around a lot. it can be quite a challenge if you're new to wire wrapping to hold everything still now you're going to turn your piece
try to hold this stuff still and you're going to adjust the bend on your top frame pieces so that they meet right in the middle next to where your wires coming out of the bead you don't want them to cross over you want tojust meet flush
now hold these wire wraps where you want them to sit make sure that this is where you want that to be at the end here then you're gonna take the wire that'sbeen wrapped around these pieces pull it really snug you don't want that to crossover so if it does go ahead and just give it a tweak
very snugly wrap about six or seven times you're just going to flip it and do the same thing on this side so you don't want them to separate the endsbecause it won't stay snug right around the end there a good six or seven times trim off the extra
use your nylon jaw pliers to push that down make sure it's nice and tight make sure it's all in there now you're going to trim the ends of your wire this one is already about where you want it you want these pieces here to be
about an inch from where they cross you want these end pieces here to be also about an inch don't let them be too short, maybe justover you can always trim down later but youcan't get any back we're going to take a pair of round nose pliersand for the base here it's gonna go below these pieces here, so you gonna do these pieces first
go to the bottom of your round nose pliers and pinch there so that it's gonna give you a largeloop and just rotate rotate and make one large loop and then you can flatten it with with your round pliers or you can useyour nylon jaw pliers repeat that for all four of those
you're going to gently separate the end wires here's so that you can get yourpliers in now gonna start at the tip and your going to work the other way, so theseones went out towards the end of the link, these oneare going to roll in towards the link start at the very tip you're not gonna make at circle,you're gonna make a spiral, so don't close it all the way, just keep
moving the tip of your pliers down and bending it around so you're just gonna move your pliersdown before your circles closed and that will make a spiral this should go on top of the ones from underneath now we can adjust the ones onthe bottom they should stick out a little bit butnot like the whole link is
sticking out from behind there you should just kind of have them peek out it's okay to start rolling it a secondtime have it overlap here that's fine it should just peek out and then the other thing the last thingi wanted to do i want this setting to kind of curve down a little bit so that it sits nice and flat against your wrist when your wearing it as a bracelet it should be slightly curved, soall i'm going to do is put my fingers at the back of the bead andmy thumbs on the front here and just
gently push that's all i'm going to do it will also help the setting sit around
the bead and instead of on top and that's how you make this wire wrapped bracelet link
