Hi there and welcome to another Friday Findings video. Today I'm going to show you how you
can take just a bit of wire and make your own wire bird's nest. It's great for filling
with whatever you want to make it into a necklace pendant or a charm or an ornament.
So, in a previous video I shared with you this necklace that I made and I mentioned
how I'd purchased this wire bird's nest pendant to add to my necklace. As is often the case,
I purchase things looking at them thinking, "Oh, I'm going to buy that," because it's
too complicated and then I bring it home and study it and figure out how to make it myself.
And I've done just that with this and I'm going to show you how easy it is to make your
own wire bird's nest. What you'll need is about 3 1/2 yards of 24
gauge wire and what I've done is folded it in half and then in half again, so
I have 4 pieces about 30 inches long. And just take one of those ends and bend it down
a half an inch or so, it doesn't really matter, and bend it back on itself to make
a hook. Find something that is round and about an
inch in diameter and just wrap that wire around it and then just hook it through that hook.
And bend it down at a ninety degree angle like that and actually back itself.
This will be the edge of our nest and then it's just pretty simple from here, take
your bundle of 4 wires. Go over this edge, this frame, and go to the opposite side and
then bend those wires back. On the other side, come up on the right of
your bundle and repeat folding it down and then on the bottom on the other side, come
up on the left of your bundle. And just keep folding it and you can pinch those kind of
flat with your fingers. And repeat going all the way around, up on the right, up on the
right down on the left, fold. And it's okay, it's not actually a bad idea
if these are a little loose on that wire edge because we're going to be curving them and
shaping them into a bird's nest shape. And just keep wrapping it until you've run out
of wire. And you'll have something that looks sort of like this: kind of an absolute mess.
Now to make this look like a nest, you just need to shape it into that dome shape. One
tool I found helpful was the rounded end of my chasing hammer. I'm just going to hold
this frame and push down all around. And it takes a little bit of elbow grease, a little
bit of muscle and you can start to shape that into a nest shape. Another tool that is
great is this: a dapping set. It comes with this block, with two semi-circle shapes and
the tools that fit inside them. And actually I found I started with the smaller circle
in here just to kind of get it to start shaping. You don't have to have the dapping tools.
You can just keep shaping it with your fingers. You can pull things out with your pliers.
And then like I said, if you have something to push down over and then I actually use
my pliers and pull things out. Then go around the edges with your round nose pliers. Kind
of poking the pliers in those spaces and just sort of pulling out that ring that was your
edge of the nest. And see wherever you have these bundles that
look like they're all lined up. That's where you kind of want to grab them and pull them
apart and give it a more organic bird's nest like shape. And you just work your way around,
if you want to, you can smack it some more. These dapping tools actually you can find
them just in a local craft store these days. Metal working has become popular. I've used
them several times although I have yet to do any dapping of metal blanks. And there you
have yourself a little nest. I definitely don't recommend going much over
22 gauge. Here's a nest, I made it with the exact same length of wire but I made it with 22
gauge wire. It was a lot harder and a lot more work to get this shape. And then here's
the one I tried with 20 gauge and that was about as far as I got. It was much too heavy.
So, 24 you might even try 26 and experiment and just an idea to get you started making yourself
a very unique pendant. Thanks so much for watching KeepsakeCrafts'
videos. Up on the screen are two more videos you might be enjoy.
If you like this video, please be sure you've subscribed to my channel so you see more like
it. Also, click Like and check out my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net, where I have lots more
creative ideas and inspiration. Happy creating. Bye bye.