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Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com and I'm gonna show you how to wire wrap
rows of beads onto a form. So this is probably gonna end up being an necklace
and here I made this
into an earring. I want to show you how to create these rows
now I've got a quick link here which is great because
whenever you're doing a project like this you're gonna need two sides
obviously for your rows to stretch across
so a quick link or pre-made form is great. You can also make your own forms
of course
you'll need some beads and you'll need some wire
now you can use craft wire. You can use artistic wire
whatever wire you want. Just make sure it's really soft. I'm going to use 28 gauge
I feel like it's a really good gauge to work with for this particular project
and I'm gonna try to use some contrasting colors here so you can see what's
happening
I'm going to cut myself length of wire
the length of wire that you'll need is really going to be dependent upon
how many rows you're doing. If you're doing little 11/0 seed beads
you're going to fit a lot more rows in there and you're gonna need more wire
and depends on the size of your form as well
cut as much wire as you're comfortable working with
it's not a big deal if you have to add more later. You are just making these
nice
tight little coils around the edge so you can always add more later. I wanna show you
this technique
so I'm not gonna end up doing the entire second earring here
but I'm going to show you how you do it
cut myself some wire. I need to
anchor my wire to my form, to do that
just insert your wire into your form
wherever you want to start
and your rows can go diagonal. They can go
across or zigzag, whatever you like
I just wrapped it around the wire
and I'm going to do that several times. 28 gauge
is a very nice thin wire that also means it's not as strong as say a 24 gauge
you are gonna want to create a of number anchoring
rounds here and I would recommend at least five
so that your wire never come undone
and I'm just feeding it through
and around. However many you want
okay so when you're ready to add your beads
go ahead place them
onto your wire
We have three to begin with. So if I was stretching this
across, maybe if I went over to here
three would suffice but I actually want to diagonal so I'll add a fourth one
I'll stretch that
across. Actually you know I think I want a fifth one on there
this is all about playing, seeing what you like, there are no rules
I like that. So I got that one stretched across, my beads are filling my entire
gap
you might wanna consider using various sizes of beads so you can fill it in a
little bit better
I just pulled some four millimeter bicones here but if you say had three millimeter
some four millimeter and some five millimeter
you can really get it nice and tight in there with beads
so as I've been talking you've probably saw I just took the wire
and I wrapped it around. Now I'm just wire wrapping my form
I'll do a couple so you can
see this. I want my wire coils to be nice and tight so I'll use my fingernail
and push them together. Wire is great because you can manipulate it
I'm just going around and around
now what I'm looking at now is I wanna make sure that I
create enough coils that there's enough space between my two rows of beads
so that my beads are not crowded and
on top of each other and let me show you. Like I don't think this is enough space
I'm going to add some more beads. I'll do another five
If I was to try to stretch this across, now granted I could go
like this, I could do whatever I want but if I wanted to create a row
like this, well they're a little bit crowded right there
they're bunching up and I don't really want that so I'll take them off
and do a couple more coils
around
I think just two more should do. That's one
this is going to be two
I'll put those back on and see if they have a little bit more breathing room
another advantage to 28 gauge wire versus perhaps 26 or 24
it's easier on your fingers when you are wire wrapping it. It can get
to be a little tough on your hands. So I'm going to go with that
actually know what I want a few more coils
I am trying to put my coils right next to each and not
on top of each other. Watch out for kinks
okay that looks happier to me. They are a little bit spaced out
you could make it a little closer but that looks pretty nice to me
so now I stretched across to the other side. Hold it in place
and wrap it around the outside of
my form. Scoot that coil down so it's nice and tight
and then just wrap it
keep doing this, just back and forth. Keep wrapping it until you get
enough of a gap where your beads are gonna be spaced nicely from the next row
and then continue on to the next row. There we've got two rows
we would just add another one, go back and forth. Now what you are gonna notice
with this particular way of doing this, you end up
with a jogged effect for where your wire is. See if you see it on here with the
silver, it is a little hard to see with silver and silver
I'm but if you're doing something with a contrasting color you will end up with
wire here, no wire, wire, no wire
and if you want to avoid that, if you want say you're coils all on one side
what you're going to do is
do it here since this is our example piece
you can just trim the edges when you are done with your coil
just make sure that they're flush up against the frame. If you want
your coils to be on the same side
you're gonna work with a smaller piece of wire, wrap it around the same way started
you got that nice anchor
wraps. Remember you want to do at least 5 of them
just because this is a thinner wire
I have some nice wraps eat. Get my tail out of the way
so this is just to show you an example. I'm no longer concerned with my pattern here
and I'm going to take some beads
put them onto my wire same way as before
so on this one I'm going to stretch it across
now what I would do is instead of going
up because I want my next rows to be up here, I would just
look at the direction on my ankle wraps, snip off this tail so it's not in my way
and wire wrap around the form
in the same direction as my ankle wraps, so if they're down
I'm going to make these ones go down
one thing that is nice about doing it this way is you have to cut the wire more but you're
working with a smaller amount of wire
which for some people is a little bit easier and you don't have to worry about
getting kinked
up as match. So just do the same amount
of wire wraps around the form on the side that you had on this side so that they're
even
and then just cut your wire and what you would do for the next row
is the same thing, you'd cut a smaller amount of wire
just stretch it across here. So you get the idea
you can either go back and forth with one piece of wire, have this little jogged
effect
or you can wrap each row separately with a smaller piece of wire
and just have coils going in the same direction
each time. So that's all there is to creating rows
of beads on a wire form and then like on this one
I finished it off with a simple earring hook attached to the form
Like I said turn this one into a necklace.
Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!