A simple guide to wire wrap seaglass for a pendant or charm or anything you fancy!
Things you will need:
- Pliers
- Cutting Pliers
- Round Nose Pliers
- Square Nose Pliers (not necessary but helpful)
- Silver Plated Metal Wire
- around 1mm but thinner or thicker if you like
- you could use different coloured wire and different metals
- Ruler
- Seaglass!
Step 1. measure out about 30cm of your wire, you may not need this much and you can use more or less in the future but for now start with 30cm.
Then find the half way point in your wire and grab it with your Round Nose Pliers towards the back of the pliers..see photo.
Step 2. loop the wire around the pliers a couple of times, this will become the top of our pendant. Then get twisty and twist both sides of wire around each other until they're about the length of the piece of seaglass you want to use. Try to keep the twist nice and tight, it's a little fiddly but you'll great at this with some practice!
Step 3. now hold your seaglass in front of the twisted wire (the spine if you like) and pinch it to the wire nice and tight whilst we start to wrap!
Now don't stress if this goes wrong, it's all practice and trial and error! Often if you bend a wire and then change your mind about the bend you'll have to start again for a really polished final look as the bends don't come out properly, but have a play!
Start with one piece of wire, you can either come down under the seaglass or wrap more to the side and up. Whichever way you start just wrap around and up the glass back towards the loop at the top, try to keep the seaglass stable in the same place and keep the wire wrapped tightly to avoid too much rattling around (don't worry if there's a little, we can fix that later). Once you get to the loop wrap the excess around the loop 2 or 3 times, don't worry about excess wire as we can trim that, see the video in the next step..
Step 4. next we'll come to the other wire. So have a little look about the 'open spots' of your glass, the parts where the glass is not super secure and may fall out. In the above image it's the top and the bottom, this will vary depending on shape of glass and the way you've wrapped it.
Watch this video below to see how I tackle the other wire. I do very much the same, I wrap from the bottom up to the loop and wrap around the loop a few times again.
Step 5. snip off the excess wire around the loop and pinch the ends in using your pliers, here we're try to make sure it won't scratch you if you're wearing it as a pendant. Then, this is where square nose pliers are helpful but not necessary, we're going to tighten up the wire by using your finger to pinch the wire onto the side of the glass as you can see in the video, and using just the very end (the nose) of the pliers to clamp and twist the wire about 45 or 90 degrees on the back side of the glass. Annnnnnnnd you're done! You can add a jump ring if you like, just make a simple jump ring by wrapping some wire about the round nose pliers a couple times and snipping them to make a little jump ring!:) enjoy! do let me know if you have any comments or questions!
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