Ornaments from a wire by own hands: a master class

The ornaments from the wire were made by ancient masters. Initially, Old Russian smiths forged jewelry, chain mail, weapons, and from the twelfth century switched to the method of drawing. This made it possible to simplify the process of manufacturing a thin, flat wire, as well as reduce the prices for products from it. The time has passed for wire mail, but craftsmen continue to amaze with wire products: hair ornaments, earrings, bracelets, rings, pendants, souvenirs, charms, bulky items.

Information for Beginners

Though products from a wire and find from ancient times at different people, however names of craftsmen have not reached our days. Wire wire wire jewelry, like a new kind of needlework, went down in history with the name of Alexander Calder. The propensity to weave wire ornaments, souvenirs appeared in him from childhood, when he made earrings, bracelets to his sister, and gave his parents for Christmas gifts of brass animals.

He devoted all his activity to making ornaments, toys, sculptures. He rarely soldered metal parts, more often used the method of marking. This method allows you to create decorations for even beginners. For work different types of wire are used (brass, silver, copper, nickel, titanium, aluminum, zinc).

Thick wire is used for the base of the product, as it holds the shape, and the thin adorns the ornaments from the wire. In the weaving can add different stones, beads, beads, bugles. When the wire is wrapped in a thread, then this is already a kind of needlework, which is called a ganutel.

What do you need to work?

Often novice craftsmen produce wire products in mixed techniques, applying knowledge from such areas as wire wrap, ganutel, beadwork, quilling, and isolate. First, a sketch is drawn, then it is disassembled into separate elements, patterns, and only then it turns to practical manufacture. What is needed for a budding wyervorker (the so-called wizard working in the wire wrap technique):

• tool,
• All kinds of wire,
• Decorative beads, beads, stones.

Weaving of jewelry from the wire is impossible without round nose pliers, pliers with sharp-nosed, curved, rectangular, nylon "tip", nippers, nail file (can be replaced for the first time by sandpaper), anvil (flaeyzen), dagger, hammer, wiggick, drawing board, crossbar.

If you work with copper wire, then you can bend your fingers, help with pliers or other hard objects. To make a pattern from a thick material or a more complex pattern, you need a wiggick and a bolt. The first tool looks like a board with a lot of holes and pegs. Arrange the pegs in the right order and wire them up, creating an unusual pattern. Rigel (a metal cone with a thickness of 9-40 mm) will be needed to create bracelets, rings, chains. At first, the connecting parts can be made round-nosed.

To make jewelry made of wire, made with your own hands, looked like purchased, get a sulfur liver. This material is patented copper, bronze, silver, brass wire products for giving light antiquity.

Basic elements: pin and spiral

Pin is a wire with a tip, something like a needle for stabbing. To make it, pliers plugging the wire, retreating a third from the edge (how many left, this diameter will be at the ring). Rotate the wire 90 degrees. And begin to wind a half of the tip of the round-bends, forming a ringlet. Then, near the base, the extra edge of the wire bites off, the ring is aligned with the help of round-nosed pliers.

The spiral is an uncomplicated circle with a ring. This pattern is great for making jewelry from wire and beads. The tip of the wire is pinched by the round pliers, making a tight circle around the tip. Then, between the tips, the resulting ring is pinched and the spiral is gently wound. The diameter of the pattern depends on the number of turns. At the last stage, the wire from the received spiral is pinched by pliers, and a ring is formed by the free end of the wire, as in making a pin. Excess material bite off the wire cutters.

Main elements: spring, rings, balls

The spring is used for wire braiding. On the deadbolt tightly wind the wire of the required length. It can be used to create some individual elements, or put on a pin, creating a volume edging, or from braided pins to make an unusual chain for men.

Rings are used as connecting elements, especially if you rub ornaments from beads and wires. The wire is wound on the deadbolt (the diameter of the rings depends on its thickness) by tight twisting, like a spring. Then it is removed and cut in the middle by pliers. If the space has turned out great, then pliers or fingers close the ring.

Balls on the edges of the wire are created by heating on the burner (some masters use a conventional gas hob). To get them, you need a high power burner and wire "unclean", as well as a drill that creates such droplets perfectly smooth. Black wire can be used with sulfuric liver and ammonia. The hammer is flattened, creating new elements.

Decoration from wire: a master class for beginners

If you've never tried to weave wire, then it's worth trying out your strength on simple examples. To make a bracelet, you need thick and thin copper wire, round nose pliers, nippers and a burner (if you work with a whole wire skein).

From a thick wire make a ring of the right diameter. To do this, find the cylindrical pattern of the desired diameter (pipe). Wrap the coils with a thick wire, connect them in several places with temporary staples (bend the wire across the width of the rings of the bracelet, cut off, put them on and snap the ends).

If there is no thick wire, you can buy ready-made cheap bracelet rings, connect them in several places for strength and begin braiding. The braiding method assumes a copper thin wire to twist each bracelet ring from below upwards and from top to down.

The weaving should go one after another, if the wire has moved away, then move the round-bells. If you work with a long wire, then during the weaving it becomes stiff. Therefore, it is heated with a burner (looks like a hair dryer with a flame), continue the weaving. Since after heating copper blackens, then the finished product is treated with citric acid (warm water, add the powder, cook for several minutes the product, then rinse in an aqueous solution).

You can brace the whole bracelet with wire or in the foreground attach other ornaments from the wire (wire wrap allows connection with stones, beads, flattened wire elements).

To the copper bracelet make earrings. For their production, wire, ready-made fasteners for earrings, connecting rings, decorative elements (stones, beads) will be needed. Please note that the color of the jewelry should be in harmony with the fasteners and the wire. If copper wire, then gold-plated fasteners with an amber stone. If the fasteners are for silver, then take a wire of light tones.

So, from a thick wire you need to make a big and small ring. Blanks for the second earring do in mirror reflection immediately, applying details to each other. Now a thin wire braids freely inner and outer ring. If you want to get a more spacious look, then each ring is braided by a spring (or on a ring, put on a spring), and then a thin wire through the spring braid the products (in this case the braid will be very even).

Then fasten the fastener to the outer ring. Beads and a stone put on a wire and with the help of a connecting ring fasten to an internal ring. You can make the connecting elements yourself. To impart antique, copper is blackened and varnished. Are obtained as jewelery from jewelry wire.

How to braid a stone for a pendant

Well, when there is a bead with a hole where you can stick a wire, and if the decoration is made of stone or a coin, then what is to be done? For such cases, a special method of braiding is used. You will need round-nosed pliers, thin-nose pliers, side cutters without chamfer, wire (thickness 0.3 and 0.8 mm), stone (cabochon).

Weaving the jewelry from the wire begins with the fabrication of the frame. Wrap the thick cabochon wire. Thin-wire tails lift up to an angle of 90 degrees. Leave four centimeters and cut off excess material. From this wire, prepare a lot of connecting rings with a diameter of 4 mm.

Cut off 1.3 meters of a thin wire, leaving 50 cm, start to the carcass to tighten the connecting rings. First, 4 turns wrapped around the frame, then five coils roll the ring to the frame. Further, without breaking off the wire, go to the ring and wrap the neighboring element in three turns, smoothly go out onto the frame.

So attach all the rings. Periodically, attach the frame to the stone, if it is convex, and form the position of the rings. Perhaps, when lifting, it will be necessary to increase the rings. Connect the last ring to the first five turns, and cut the wire from the wrong side. The ends of a thick wire twist a spiral (you can make completely different curls), bend the sides of the resulting pattern, forming a diamond, wrap it with a thin wire that was left originally.

Wrong side of pendant

The front side of the jewelry from the wire is ready, now do the wrong side. To do this, from a thick wire, make the same circle, but smaller. The ends of the wire bend into a tight ring. It is necessary to make both curls fit tightly to each other. The lower part of the product can be flattened with a hammer. Just knock them on the sly, unhurriedly - hit one place, see if it's even, then went on. Otherwise, depressions are formed.

Now connect the outer frame, the stone and the underside in a single whole. Fix several places with a temporary wire so that the parts sit tight and do not move. A thin wire now needs to wrap the outer and inner frame where there are voids (between the connecting rings on the outer part).

The last stage of the braided tail with curls makes a loop of the pendant. To do this, using a steel needle carefully, slowly bend so that the curls found on the connecting rings of the product. Now pass the string or tape. As you can see, jewelry made of copper wire is not worse than jewelry.

Pay attention, the stone on the decoration is kept by external patterns (connecting rings, curls), which are fixed together by turns. If the wire is free, the cabochon will fly out.

Hair Ornaments from Wire

From the wire it is easy to make invisible, hairpins, combs. The easiest option is to string the bead onto the wire, make a flower shape with a curl and attach it to the base. A more interesting pattern will come from a flattened wire. Then leave the end for the bead, and the rest of the wire slowly flatten, simultaneously shaping. In this example, the wire wraps around the bead, then go to the petals, end up with a curl-spiral. You put on a bead, get a tight fit of the wire to each other, solder to the base.

Let's take a closer look at how to make jewelry from wire, beads, beads. On a sheet of paper, draw a bar chart, starting from the curl and going to the outer circle, the end of which passes into another spiral, located above the first. A circle with two inner antennae is obtained. This element is made without interruption. Then in a place of contact of two curls with a thin wire you braid them with several turns.

Then, with the same material, braid the barrettes, threading beads, beads according to the scheme:

• Between the beads six turns;
• Between the little beads, eight turns;
• Between the big beads ten turns.

The distance is determined by the diameter of the decorative material. Beginning and ending with weaving with small beads, and in the middle large beads. Curls are braided only with beads. Next, make a hairpin. Fold the wire in half so that one end is longer by a couple of centimeters. Attach it to the barrette, the hairpin from each edge should be more by 5-7 centimeters. Excess material is cut off. From the middle, twist the hairpin, twist the ends with a spiral.

To decorate the copper wire in harmony with the frame, in the curls, thread the beads (one piece at the one end, another bead with 3 beads, 5 beads). It is not necessary to twist the whole hairpin so that the hair is not entangled. Only separately the antennae and between them a distance of 0.6-1 cm, forming a triangle.

Simple ideas for original products

Handicraft shops offer a huge assortment of various decorative elements for making jewelry. Buy a few, it will save your time, enrich knowledge (now you will for sure know how to make connecting rings, clasps, clamps). Such prefabricated ornaments made of wire by their own hands do not differ from purchased ones (unless at an affordable price).

Here is an example of how to make an ethnic decoration from square elements, in which there are round voids. From a thick wire, bend the square (the corners must be straight) and a circle of a smaller size. You put a square, inside it a circle, you braid the figures with a thin wire. Another option - before connecting each figure to the wire, put on a spring, and then their braid. Get a massive decoration.

To combine the necklace with earrings and a bracelet, repeat the same story. On an example with square earrings a necklace will be simple from beads, and in the middle fasten a pattern from squares. Another example of the original jewelry from the wire (master class of a two-color bracelet):

• Separate the wire into identical pieces;
• With the help of the schwenz, join the light prefabricated half-billets and the dark wire one at a time;
• Attach fasteners to the edges;
• Form the received line into a bracelet of several rings.

Bracelets can be made without fasteners, they just put on hand. The shape of the snake or arrow is most suitable for such an ornament from the wire (photo of the hand with bracelets).

Brief conclusions

It is better to train an arm and dexterity on a copper wire at manufacturing of simple hairpins, rings, pins. If there is no specialized equipment and tools, do not despair. Apply your imagination. Instead of the burner, use a gas stove to create droplets (and you can not do without borax, it creates a perfectly flat surface). Vigdzhik replace with sleight of hand, round pliers and paper circuit. Rigel can replace at the initial pores knitting needles of different diameters.

In order not to patch ornaments from the wire, use non-oxidizing wire. You can cover the decoration with varnish for durability. If you need to create a patina, clean the wire well in lemon solution. Then put it in warm water, put a thin layer of sulfur ointment on the fingers (pharmacies are sold), wash the material under the water. Do not remove from the water, rinse the sulfur with the usual dish remover, wipe dry.

Alternatively, heat the wire on the fire, and then warm it with a baby cream and rub until the desired result, then wash it off with soap. Again patina is a color for an amateur, created by trial and error. You can do without the color of antiquity. Someone simply paints with gilded or silver acrylic paint, varnishes.

About how to make jewelry from wire, there is no exact information. Each master finds something of his own, talks about it in his master classes or simply offers his creation. Try to force on simple products, practice on the finished products of the craftsmen: mentally divide the decoration into parts and reproduce it in practice.