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Hi this is Megan with Beadaholique.com and today I'm going to show you
how to make
the wire wrapped
components for the Blarney earrings
using a wig jig
this is
the finished earring, so I'm gonna make another one just like this
and I'm using the wig jig centaur
it has
the half round and then the square grid
I'm using artistic wire. I have this nice christmas emerald green in twenty-four
gauge
and I have non tarnish brass in twenty gauge
and then I'm also using the
Miyuki delica cube beads and I have this pretty silver lined emerald color and
that's all I'm going to use to make these
I'm going to
make the dangles and earring hook out of
non tarnish wire as well
the tools you're going to need other than your wig jig
are
flush cutters
nylon jaw pliers, round nose pliers,
regular chain nose pliers
Wubber's bail making pliers
and then I'm going to use
these wire looping pliers for my loops here, you can also just do it with
chain nose or round nose pliers and then
you're going to need a cup burr
and this is to smooth the part of the earring hook that goes in your your ear
so the first thing
to do is going to be coil
this green wire around the brass wire
and there are a lot of really
handy tools for wire coiling but they don't
coil the wire thin enough to fit over twenty gauge wire
so this I
actually just adjust it by hand
It's kind of tedious but it doesn't take that long
so
cut yourself
a piece of the green wire
probably about eighteen inches long
just get a scrap of the brass wire about six inches long
I'm not going to use this piece again
cut your wire
with the flush side towards your piece
you're going to have this in your hands a lot
and you want that to not be sharp
as
I learned the hard way
not being smart about it
you want to straighten it out but it doesn't need to be perfect
just no big ***
bends in it
then we're going to
several inches from the end here
just bend the end up and back down to give yourself something to hold onto
take this piece here
of the green wire
put it between then bend it around
just
getting it fastened and it doesn't need to be perfect
by any means
just so that when you twist
it will holds still and it'll
twist around
now all I did
is
turn the bent part
and use your fingers to guide
the wire into a nice tight coil
you just keep going all the way down, you need two inches so
you can
do two inches
worth of that
and don't measure where it's loose measure two inches where it's nice and tight the whole
way
keep going until you have two inches and then cut that off and trim the end so that
it's not sharp
and I have a two-inch here
that I did before
put that aside
now I'm going to use the wig jig to make this
central drop shaped piece
go ahead and
cut about a foot
of the
brass wire
straighten it out
I always like to start with a
loop so hold on to
and use the nylon pliers to straighten them out
and then just go ahead and trim off
the little handle
now we're going to make this
teardrop shape that's the
base for the earring
we're going to start
with the bottom, so I have on the centaur jig
I've placed five pegs
in the forth
set the in of holes there
so I have skipped two holes between
each and I just went all the way the half round
give yourself
a few inches above here
and
take this up into
this section here and you need a few inches to wrap it
go ahead and
start
on the left side
and wrap the
wire
around the peg
then continue
around the half circle
wrap around
all the way
and continue and as you work
with this finger your going to
shape your wire but also hold it down nice and close to the base of the wig jig
wrap
and you could flip this over so that your work
starts at the top and works down
it balances out, it doesn't have
an awkward shape to it, layering them all on top that works out
and around that fifth spot
and then
bring your wire over
into these
three up here just like that, they should cross over just before this top
peg which is
the very last peg in the center and then I have a peg skipping one to each
diagonal
right now
I'm going to go ahead and
pull our work up
be careful that you keep the pegs
on the jig
tighten those loops down flat
with your nylon jaw pliers
then you're going to trim
your wires
so that they're about the same length, you do need about four inches to
either side
now take are our coil wire
measure an inch
it should be an halfway mark
I've just got my thumbnail in there, you can
keep yourself
in the right spot
however is best for you
bend the
coil
right at the halfway point
if you wanna grab your
pliers and get them in there. You don't want to cut them
just put your thumbnail in there in back and bend
it'll separate
once you have enough room you can get your chain nose pliers in the middle there and
keep the coils nice and tight to either side of the bend
you don't want it to open like a slinky. You want it to be a
coil and then a bend and a braid and a coil
now we're gonna get this piece
onto this
slide
one side
right on there
you can
coax it out
the opening
where you have the bend
and once you have it out of there, it's easier to make the rest of the bend a little
sharper
then we're going to
very
slightly bend this piece to get it
to go in the other side
we can bend it back when we're done
I want to make sure that the piece where it's been working up
every time it wraps
lays on top
and get that to go through that last coil on the other way
be careful as usual you nudge your coils that they aren't
loosening
so once you
work your wires both through here it can be a little tricky. Just be gentle. You don't
want to bend
the coils out of shape
it'll just make it harder if you do
move the coils down
straighten out the ends
If they'll all bent up like they probably did
but
put the shape back onto the jig if it got a little
bent up
you can reshape it
go ahead and pull the coils down
if they don't quite sit evenly
you can always kind of pull down on the coil and
spread it just slightly
we're going to have it sit
pretty much all the way down against that first loop
hold the left one with your fingers kind of at a
straight line across
gently wrap the right wire around
the peg
and don't pull it into a tight circle, leave it as a teardrop shape
then wrap it
in a loop
around
the last peg here
and repeat with the left
if you do the left one first
it's gonna sit
more evenly flat but we can switch them around though
and in a nice loop
take your nylon jaw pliers and
push it flat
and pull that up off the pegs
if the pegs fly out just put them back
just gently
flip-flop those and
put the left one behind it
now
use
flush cutters to trim those loops
you want the flush side
against the end of the wire that's going to stay on the piece
it can be a little tricky to get in
the back loop
go from the front
be careful. Wear safety goggles or hold the end of the wire
because they will fly
go in with your nylon jaw pliers
get these to lay flat
they do kind of sit on top of each other so it is
a little tricky
if they bend out of place
don't worry about it, you can fix them after
you can kind of just use your hands to
adjust them and get them all
in a nice happy place
the earring hook will hold them in place
I'm happy with that
this isn't looking as long as this side
if you don't just
gently
spread that coil a little bit
you can even that right up
I'm going to go in here with my
chain nose pliers and just bend these a little bit so that line up
be careful with the regular chain nose because it will scratch the finish off
the artistic wire
just you really gentle
they're a little bit
more precise but just be gentle when you need to use them
we've got all the loops
all lined up
now I'm going to make the dangles
cut about
eight or ten inches of wire
and straighten it out
now here I'm going to use these wire looping pliers, if you prefer to use regular
round nose and chain nose pliers to make the loops you can definitely do that too
I'm going to about a
quarter of an inch down
use my wire looping pliers to make
a nice
uniform loop
bend up
you can
use your nose pliers to tighten that up if it's loose
place Miyuki cube beads
on the wire
hold that loop and make the other loop
perpendicular
so that it sit
not the same flat because I want that loop
to show round when they are hanging
give yourself just a little bit of room above the bead
and
make another loop at the top
trim that off
and then you're going to need
four more of those
cut yourself a new flush end
repeat that
you can do all ten for both pairs at once
do five to show you
for the one earring
try to keep
your wire at about the same point on the
plier so that your loops stay close to size
and now
the last
loop on each of these is still slightly open when you made it, pull it open and
hand the dangle from the loop. Close it up
do this with all five
you can also just use
head pins
if you prefer for this I'd like
having the loop on the end
because it brings that round loop look
from the top of the structure
and the loops here into the bottom
so you can choose what you prefer
the only thing left to do it is to make
the earring hook
it's actually
pretty easy to do, just need about six inches of wire
take my Wubber's
I want it to be similar in size as the other so pay attention to that one
take about an inch from the end
and just pull the ends
together
It's going to
match that spot right there
you need to put
a round bend
in this piece, go ahead and grab that with your
round nose pliers
just bend
the end around to meet
trim that piece off
straighten that up
and then
at the bottom here
measure it. I'm just going to take
chain nose pliers and kick that piece out
so it's got a slight bend
trim that end flush
about an eighth of an inch and trim the end
and I'm going to use cup burr and a pin vise here
and this got
a little
fine grit kind of abrasive inside the cup and it's rounded, it's very hard to
see because it's so tiny
use the cup burr that fits your wire
you're gonna stick the end of your cut wire into that tiny little cup and twist fast
it's going to file off
the rough edges and make that a nice
clean, smooth, rounded piece
that's gonna make it safe for putting it in your ear without cutting you up
like I did my finger
it is sharp, so you always want
to do this before you use for an earring
do it a few times, you might even see a little bit of the metal dust
until it feels nice and smooth
then just
open the loop up
bring it through both of the center loops
close it backup
and that's how you make
the Blarney earrings using a Wig Jig. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!