Welcome back to Wire Jewelry and Wire Work Basics.
I have been working on a new series of videos and tutorials for you to enhance your basic wire working skills.
We are focusing on creating a variety of Wire Spirals which we can add to our jewelry designs as embellishments or components.
Wire Spirals can be used on many types of jewelry projects.
From charms in stringing projects, to soldered accents in metal projects, wire spirals are a lovely versatile element and are easy to make with practice.
In Part 1, of this miniseries, we learned how to create two types of flat, 2 dimensional spirals.
- Open Centered Closed Spirals
- Close Centered Closed Spirals
TIP – If you haven’t worked with wire a lot or recently, I recommend that you practice with cheap wire before starting a new project.
Tools and Materials
Here is a list of materials and tools I used in the tutorials with my affiliate links provided for your convenience.
Using my links will help support this blog and the free content I share with you.
The Techniques
The full tutorial is in video form below. Here are a few tips to help you along the way.
- Try not to let mistakes frustrate you.
- By using cheaper wire, it is easy to cut off the booboo and start again.
- Practice is an important part of mastering the techniques of wire work.
- Check out other tutorials if you have trouble understanding.
Not everyone teaches or learns the same way. So, I encourage you to explore other tutorials and books on your own.
This tutorial uses two Closed Spirals with Open Centers from our previous lesson.
As you work to form the cone shape, push as gently as you can.
It becomes very difficult to reshape the wire, once it is pushed too far from the correct plane position.
The specialty pliers I used in the video are called Tweezer Nose Pliers and they come in super handy for separating the center wires gently.
Remember that these techniques usually take some practice to master.
Towards the end of the video, I show you how you can turn the cone into a charm and a post earring.
When you are working on a project, to get this part correct and identical on each cone, measure and straight wire.
Then mark the place where you will make the bends.
This will help you achieve a professional finish.
I hope you find this tutorial useful and have fun adding three dimensional cone spirals to your designs.
Stay tuned for my next Wire Spiral Basics post, when I will show you how to make Open Wire Spirals and we will talk about make duplicates.