jewelry making tutorialMany wire artisans love making rings. If you remember from my previous posts Wire Wrapped Rings - Your Gateway to Wire Wrapping Galore and Inspirational Wire Wrapped Rings, the tutorials featured require a few wraps of wire around a mandrel.

Tania of Jet Designs in Brisbane, Australia has a series of Youtube videos (shown/listed below) which show you how to make a wire wrapped crystal ring from a double looped eye pin.

She does a really good job of showing how eye pins should be made - beginners often create a "p" shaped loop which is incorrect. But I don't think this is essential as the loops will be hidden. Note that the loops are made in the opposite direction relative to each other.

She used 18G wire which makes for a strong ring - you only need one wrap around a mandrel. The wrapping of finer wire around the ring base is strictly for decoration and thus optional.

I really like this excellent tutorial because it provides a way of making an adjustable ring that will fit even if you don't have a proper ring mandrel.

If you are going to try her video tutorial, here are some additional tips:

1. If you don't know your ring size, wrap some yarn around your finger and cut a length which represents the circumference. Lay it out and cut a piece of 18G wire about 1/2" longer than that yarn scrap.

2. Use a marker pen as a mandrel.

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3. She makes it look easy with 18G wire but I found it hard to push down the looped ends so they don't stick up as shown below right. If I had done this on my ring mandrel, I would hammer it slightly. But you could also use your chain nose pliers to ease them flat. Try on the ring and make it fit better - as Tania points out, you can let the loops move to the side of each other.

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4. She points out you don't have to wire the loops together - the picture above right shows me pulling the two halves of my wrapped crystal ring slightly apart to show they are not connected. This might help if you are making rings for someone else so fine tuning the size is not an issue.

5. The eye pin ring base can be used as a basic base to do all sorts of wire wrapping not just with crystals. Shown here is my small gemstone donut experiment with a flower bead. So let your creativity juices flow!

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The Jet Design tutorial is in three parts : Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.







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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips