Jewelry Making Basics
This post includes tips on jewelry making basics and how to get started making jewelry and provides simple tips on the basics of jewelry, and or beaded jewelry basics. Affiliate links are provided for your conveinience.
These techniques will help you make some of the simplest forms of jewelry, which included stringing and wire working.
Before You Get Started
You can refer back to my other post where I talked about my five basic jewelry making tools. Â In that post you can review the five basic pairs of pliers that you need.
Five Basic Jewelry Tools:
1). Flat Nose Pliers (For grabbing jewelry components or holding in place)
2). Round Nose Pliers (For making wire loops and opening jump rings)
3). Flush Cutters (To make clean angled cuts on jewelry wire and string)
4). Crimping Pliers (To crimp closed a crimp tube and finish the piece. You can get a set of these four pliers here. They are my absolute favorite brand plier. While pricey, I promise completely worth it)
5). Designated Space (A proper place to lay out all your materials and workspace and my Project Planner you can get in my FREE RESOURCE LIBRARY)
Getting Started…
To get started some of the most basic techniques that you need to know is first and foremost crimping. This is where that specific crimping plier comes into play because it has two different grooves in it that allow you to do a two step process to finish the end of a necklace or tie it off onto a clasp.
By crimping you can connect and remove your necklace or bracelet with a clasp onto your neck without losing all of your beads.
In order to use the crimping plier you will have to have crimp tube, which you actually string onto the wire and then you crimp it down or you kind of fold it over twice using that crimping plier.
Crimping Tubes
Crimp tubes are the most type of way to crimp and they are a seamless little metal tube or a little tiny metal bead in the shape of a tube and they secure the end of the beading wire.
Jewelry Making Basics Tip #1: To use a crimping tube you’ll want to string one of the crimping tubes onto your beading wire, your beading string, and then you’ll want to make a loop at the end of it and pass it back through. The reason is, because you need that loop in order to secure a jump ring to your metal clasp or to your finishing piece. You can even string the loop through the ending hole on your clasp.
You’ll use the back notch of your crimping plier, so you’ll see here in your crimping plier you have two notches. You’ll want to use the back end of that notch and make the first crimp or crunch down on that crimping tube.
In closing the wire into that tube it will represent a crescent type shape or like a little bit of a dip into the tube. Then, you’ll want to rotate that tube 90 degrees, or you’ll want to turn it up on its side, and then place that tube into the front notch of the pliers and then fold the two new holes over into the chambers, making another clean cylinder trim. Then, you’ll want to trim off the excess wire.
What it does is it kind of folds that tube in half and then it folds it in half again, and it basically crimps and crunches down on your beading wire to finish it. I know that it may look like or feel like at first it’s not going to be secure, however this is probably the most secure piece in the jewelry stringing section. This is what you would call your knot at the end of the string.
Jewelry Making Basics Tip #2: The next basic technique I want to talk about today is wire working with metal wire. This is to finish off your pieces or to add on a clasp, like at the end of your crimping area. You’ll want to do that by adding a jump ring. A jump ring is a small circular piece of wire that has one opening. To open a jump ring you will want to connect two pieces together, so the jump ring is the thing jumping the two holes together.
Related Post: Five Jewelry Making tools you need to make jewelry
You want to open a jump ring by using your flat nose and round nose pliers, or two types of pliers, one in each hand because they will act as if your little miniature hand. Open a jump ring by grasping each side of the opening with a pair of pliers but do not pull them apart, instead what you’ll want to do is twist them in the opposite direction so that you can open and close them without distorting the round shape of the jump ring.
Head Pins
The last technique that I’m going to talk about today is working with a headpin. Headpins are straight little wires that have a flat end at the end of the wire, so that the beads you’re placing on them do not slip off.
So, it’s basically a wire that has a stop on the end. To form a loop to make another section or a beading piece, you’ll want to take your flat nose pliers and place them at a 90 degree bend, or at least one half of the end of the wire.
Use your round nose pliers to grasp the wire after the bend. I usually wear my or place my round nose plier in my left hand and use my flat nose pliers in my right hand and roll that plier backwards around my round nose plier to make that bend.
Jewelry making basics tip #3: Do not go past the 90 degrees because what you’ll want to do is kind of replace your hand adjustment and then bend that using your thumb to wrap around the nose of the pliers, bringing it all the way around.
Related Post: Make Designer Bracelets with only wire
Once you get it all the way around you’ll want to simply twist that loop around as you would a jump ring, and I usually go around two to three times and end it on the front, making a wrapped loop.
Then you will go ahead and trim the excess wire and cut that back with your flush-cutter pliers. You now have a bead on a wire with a loop using your jump ring techniques, you can then jump that piece onto your chain or to any beading wire that you already crimped.
I hope this helps you with your jewelry making, if you want more please leave a comment and let me know, and happy jewelry making.
Comments & Reviews
The Jewel Creation says
Hey!
Thanks for this informative article. This is very helpful.