Vintage Cherries
1. Assemble your tools and materials. I always find it helpful to have a bead board handy to hold beads and materials and keep things organized. Begin by threading your red faceted beads on head pins and creating a loop at the top with round nose pliers, don’t finish this off with coiling rather leave it as a loop for ease of attaching the stems. Next thread your two leaves and again create the loop at the top cutting off the excess wire.
2. Now to make your stems, you will need to use your nimble fingers to bend the wire into a snake or curved design to give some whimsy and movement to the look of your finished piece. See the photo for reference. Use your round nose pliers to loop off the top and bottom and your flush cutters to remove excess wire, take care to cut the wire with the flush side to the good.
3. Attach your “cherries” to one end of your stems and add the leaves to the other end.
4. Next you will create the chain part of your design. I have used a 2 ¾” length of medium curb steel chain. I removed the length of chain using the round and chain nose pliers to open and to close the links. Attach one end of the chain to your spring ring clasp and the other to an eye clasp end securing the links with the two- plier method.
5. Now add one 1” and one 1 3/8” length of chain to the bottom link of the eye clasp, this is how you will dangle your cherry charms.
6. Attach the top of your stems to the two lengths of wire. Now get out there and accessorize!
Girly Girl
1. This is a variation on the first design. You will create the top part of your jean charm as you did in the last set of instructions using the medium curb chain in a 2 ¾” length and the spring ring and eye clasp.
2. Next you will need two lengths of elongated cable (one 1 7/8” and one 2 6/8”.) You will be attaching beaded eye pins to the chains. Attach preassembled faceted clear glass beaded eye pins on the top and fourth link of the shorter length with a beaded and coiled eye pin with a Swarovski bicone on the end link. Attach the clear eye pins to the 3rd, 6th, and 9th link of the longer chain with a coiled eye pin Swarovski bicone on the end.
3. Using your nimble fingers take a 5” length of pink SP 20 gauge Artistic Wire and starting at one end bend the wire carefully to form the word “love” in lower case letters. Do some practice runs with the silver tone 20 gauge before you use the colored wire to get the technique down. I began by looping the wire into the “l” with the second stroke of the letter going underneath the first. Next I created the “o” by looping around with the wire crossing up around over itself and over top of the top part of the letter (see photo for clarification!) Down and back up using fingers for tension control to make the “v” and looping under and back over for the top of the “e” with a nice swoop to the end. Adjust the word with your hands to make it pretty and flat. Now take your round nose pliers to form a loop at the top and bottom of the word and use your flush cutters to cut off any excess wire.
4. Attach the top part of the word to the bottom of the eye clasp using your round or chain nose pliers to secure. Add a coiled eye pin Swarovski bicone to the end of your word, again using pliers to help secure it closed.
5. Attach the two chains to the eye clasp graduating in length from behind the “love” charm. |
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