Wire wrapping beads really is easy and adds that special accent to a bead or two, totally changing the look of a designer piece of jewellery. You can use any bead though of course working on a small bead may be a little more work than its worth.
We are using two different techniques here and you can expand them by using more wire, your imagination is the limit.
Our wire wrapped beads are 6 cm long agate, the wire used was 20 gauge soft sterling silver.
For the first bead we want to create a large coil on each end. With this in mind we have an exaggerated tail for the wrapped loop, this one is 9 cm though you can most definitely have more. It is going to depend on the length of the tail and the width of the bead around the hole for how much of a coil you get. As you can see these beads are quite flat and large near their hole so our coil will not encase the sides of the bead but that is also a good look if you want it.
The technique here is the same as a wrapped loop all you do is extend the coil and keep wrapping the wire only cutting the very last part of the end and tucking it under to tidy up.
Now for the second wire wrapped bead we are going to create a very simple cage around it. This technique was used in the jade design that we have had many enquiries about. Make sure the wire fits through the bead hole twice
For a 6 cm bead we cut 40 cm of wire and looped the wire around our round nose pliers 12 cm in. If your not sure on the lengths try it out with some practice wire first to make sure you will get the effect you are after without wasting expensive good wire.
With a little adjustment using your pliers turn the wire ends down and pop them through your bead.
Now the longer length is going to wind down the bead and create the wrap on the other end around the loop that is already there.
With the shorter end you make a normal wrapped loop, turning the wire to right angles and folding back to loop over your round pliers and then wrapping.
There you have it two simple techniques that don’t take much longer than plain wire wrapping and add that special touch and individuality to your jewellery pieces.
TIP: We used callipers to keep the beads in place while working the wire these are available in the tools section.
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Free beading tutorial by Yvonne Kristel all rights reserved.
