Hello and welcome to another jewelry making video brought to you by KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today, we're going to make this bracelet full of all sorts of bead dangles. It's a study
in contrast between the edginess of the metal and the girlyness of the bead caps and the
beads. I picked up this length of chain at a bead
show some time ago and when I decided I wanted to make a bracelet with it, I thought it would
be interesting instead of going with edgy kind of Goth looking charms which is what
this looks like - I thought it would be interesting to do a contrast and have some more girly
beads like these bubble gum metallic crystals or even just some pretty blues, just to have
a variety that made it a little bit more feminine and yet combining it with a variety of metals
with bead caps such as an interesting study in contrasts.
So what you'll need to make this bracelet is about six and a half inches of chain and
a clasp and this one I found, I just thought it kind of added to the edgy funky feel, it's this
huge clasp it's actually part of a key chain. I have here an array of 40 different beads,
you can use more or less. There are eight big links in this bracelet chain so I thought
five charms on each one would give it a very full dangly feel.
So I just pulled out a variety of beads that I like together and I also pulled out bead
caps for all of them and I have forty headpins with little tiny ball ends.
For tools you'll need round nose pliers, flush cut wire cutters, two pairs of chain nose
pliers and you might like to use a pair of crimpers, these are great for rounding over
wire when we do wire wrapping. Now one of the difficult things about wire
wrapping is if I was going to wire wrap on this, I would have this in the way as I was
finishing the wraps, so I'm going to do it in an easier way. All of these chains have
split and I'm going to actually open them and slide my wrapped beads on them. So I want
to make sure that I make my wrap loops nice and big so they fit over that chain.
So we'll start with, oh, just anyone, how about one of these pink ones and just slide
the beads on the head pin, slide on your cap. (Let me make a little room here so that you
can see what I'm doing) and that's cute. Next take chain nose pliers and hold the wire
right where it comes out of the bead cap and bend that wire at a 90 degree angle.
Next, grasp that wire with your round nose pliers and I'm going to grasp about almost halfway
up my round nose pliers, so that I get a nice big loop that will fit over this chain.
So wrap the wire over your pliers, go as far as you can go which only about that far,
re-insert your round nose pliers and finish wrapping the loop. And when you're done wrapping the
loop, the wire coming out of the bead and the end of the wire should be at a 90 degree
angle to each other. Next, I'm going to hold onto that loop with
a pair of chain nose pliers and I'm going to grab that end with another pair. It really
helps to get nice neat wraps if you use a tool to do the wrapping, it just gives you
a better grip. I do like wrapping with my fingers but I find
I just get a neater result if I use a tool. So I'm just going to hold on to that and wrap.
And that's not as neat as I'd like it but I'll try to improve the next one. I'm just
going to cut that off with my flush cut pliers and that little end is not very sharp but
I'm going to grab it with the round part of my crimping pliers and tuck it in.
And then if you need to take your round nose pliers and just make that dangle nice and
round and I'm going to double check just to make sure that I'm making it big enough to
go over one of these links, I'd hate to make 40 and find that they're all too small to
go over the link. All right, I definitely don't want it any smaller than that, that's
just right. So, check after you've made one. It'll save you some aggravation later.
So then that's really all the steps, the rest is just making all 40 of your dangles.
Here I am in the middle of wire wrapping my dangles and I just thought I'd give you a
quick tip on efficiency. You saw me make one wire wrap from beginning to end but there
are 40 here to do. So it's much better to take each step and do it for all of your pieces
when you have a whole bunch to do. So first thing I did was I slid all of my
beads and bead caps on to the wires. That was one step. And then, I took the chain nose
pliers and bent them all into the 90 degree angles. In that way, I didn't have to keep
putting down the chain nose pliers, I could just pick up one after the other and do the
90 degree bends. Now, I'm doing the next step which is the
loop with the round nose pliers. Again I can just do the loops, set it down, keep the pliers
in my hand and do the next one and so on for every step that you can. If you can continue
on with that step and leave the tool in your hands you'll be a whole lot more efficient.
So, I'm going to carry on and finish up. So here we are with all 40 dangles made. That
took a little while. And I have them arranged just kind of randomly five per link. And since
this link is open now, I'm just going to go ahead and slide them on.
This one is the easiest one because it's open. It doesn't have something in the other end
and these links you open the exact same way that you would a jump ring, holding on each
side with chain nose pliers and pulling the sides in opposition making sure that that
split is closed nice and firmly. Now on the remaining ones, we'll have to do
them one side at a time. So I'm going to put three dangles on one side of the link and
three on the other. So let's see. There's the split, so hold that side, open it and
put on two, one, two and then I'm going to slide these big links are held together by
sets of three smaller ones, so we'll slide those over and put these three on the other
side. Not really complicated. The most important thing here... oh that
one's a little small. If you have a loop that's a little small just go ahead and get out your
round nose pliers and go ahead and work that loop on the round nose pliers and it will turn
out nice and round and bigger. Let's see, where was I? There we go! And then hold this
nice and firmly and we you have something that's stiff, just go ahead and bring them
towards each other a little bit, press inwards as you bring them towards each other.
Here we go, I better lay this down so you can see it. They got all tangled up which
is the idea, it just looks sort of random and I'm just going to repeat the procedure
all the way down, adding my sets of dangles and at the end I'm going to add this, my clasp
to these three little ones so that they're held together and again they're just opened
the same way you open a jump ring. So I'm going to finish with that and I'll be back.
Here, I've gone ahead and added all the dangles and just to save a little aggravation, what
I did when I added the dangles to this big loop, I left this open and I took those three
jump rings off small other chains and added them to my clasp and now I can add this all
at once to the clasp, close it up nice and securely and I'm all done.
Now you can see that little gap, what I'm going to do is hold that real tight with one
pair of chain nose pliers and then twist and as I twist it back push them towards each
other and now we don't have that gap. You don't want to do that over and over you'll
weaken the metal but you can certainly do it a couple of times.
And there it is. All done. Here's another look the bracelet we made today,
I hope you've enjoyed this project and that you'll give it a try. Here are a couple more
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channel so you don't miss any of the tutorials that I give and check out KeepsakeCrafts.net
for lots more jewelry making and crafting and sewing ideas and inspiration.
Thanks so much for watching, have a good one. Bye bye.