Hello and welcome to another jewelry making video brought to you by KeepsakeCrafts.net.
Today we're going to use beautiful lamp work beads along with a multitude of crystal dangles
and make a lovely summer bracelet. To make our bracelet today, first of all we'll
need some focal beads and I found these lamp work beads at a bead show and I thought they
were just beautiful with their summer colors and designs, so I'm going to use these. And
then, in between them I'm going to use these blister pearls from House of Gems. And then,
in between all of these, I'm going to use a bunch of 4 mm Swarovski crystal dangles.
To finish your bracelet you'll need a clasp, you'll need two each wire protectors, crimps
and crimp covers. You'll need headpins for all of your dangles.
For tools you'll need the usual wire cutters, round nose pliers and chain nose pliers. Other
tools that you may find useful will be the One Step Looper, the One Step Crimper and
crimping pliers. You'll also need about a 12 inch piece of bead stringing wire and bead
clamps are helpful too. The first thing I did was lay out my main
beads on a bead design board just to get an idea of how these are going to fit. And then,
I decided that I was going to have groupings of 8 crystals in between each of these beads
and there's eight spaces to fill, so I'll need 64 of these little dangles. And you'll
also need the same number of headpins. You can adjust your numbers depending on the size
that you want your bracelet. Let me show you how to make a dangle. These
are just little silver plated headpins. In fact, all my findings today are silver plated
with a ball on the end of the headpin. And here's one way to make a simple loop.
Use your wire cutters to cut the wire 3/8 of an inch beyond that bead. And if it's silver
plated or sterling silver, of course make sure that you save the trimmings for recycling.
And then, use a pair of round nose pliers to grasp that loop, that wire and make a loop.
Bend it back to center it over the bead and there you have a little dangle.
But I have a tool that makes quick work of these dangles and that's the One Step Looper.
So once again, slide a bead onto a headpin. I've done a Friday Findings video showing
you how to use the One Step Looper. It's up on the screen so you can check it out. But
you just push the bead right up to this little arm here on the left and then squeeze and
basically in one step, it makes your loop for you.
Now the problem with this fine gauge wire is that the One Step Looper won't close your
loop completely so you just need to bring in a pair of pliers and close that.
The next step is to make as many dangles as you need for your bracelet. Now, I've made
all of my dangles and I've also separated them into 8 piles of 8. Now I'm just going
to start stringing on my beads. And I'm leaving this end of the bracelet open in case I need
to adjust it for length later on. And once you have all your little loops made,
it's pretty easy to just thread a pile onto the wire and then add your next bead and keep
going. And so there, you can see you've got that pretty little cluster of beads in between
each of the larger beads. I'm going to go ahead and just finish stringing all these.
Now that I have all of the beads strung, I've realized that I need a little bit more length.
These kinds of designs can be tricky because it's tough to calculate just how much space
these little strung-on dangles will take up. So I'm just going to add a few silver spacers
to each end. Now it's time to finish up our ends. And we
just do that by sliding on a crimp. Slide on a wire protector. Slide half of your clasp
into the wire protector loop. And then, slide the wire back through the crimp.
And to do your crimping you can do it several ways, you can use crimping pliers. You can
just use chain nose pliers and flatten the crimp or you can use this great tool. I've
reviewed it, I've done a Friday findings video on it called the One Step Crimper which is
what I'm going to use. You just pop your crimp in there. Always,
no matter how you decide to crimp, test before you snip off the excess wire. And then, if
you like you can cover that crimp with a crimp cover. A crimp cover kind of looks like a
donut with a bite taken out of it and my favorite way of putting those on is to use crimp pliers
because they've got these round bits that will hold on to that.
You just grab your crimp cover, don't squeeze too hard yet, slide it over your crimp and
then squeeze gently. And then it just looks like you have a bead there.
Repeat to add the other half of the clasp to the other end of your bracelet making sure
that you don't pull it too tight so that your bracelet will hang gracefully.
So, here's another look at the bracelet we made today. I hope that you like this project and
you'll give it a try. Whatever season or color scheme you're going for, sliding the loops
of little wire dangles onto bead stringing wire gives a bracelet a really full, dramatic
look. Thanks so much for watching Keepsake Crafts'
videos. Up on the screen are couple more bracelet making videos you may enjoy.
And please be sure that you've subscribed to my YouTube channel so you'll see more videos
like this one and check out my blog, KeepsakeCrafts.net, where I have lots more creative ideas and
inspiration. Happy creating, bye, bye!