This tip is pretty well known but bears repeating: Coiling wire around just about any long round object (pencils or pens, knitting needles, chopsticks, metal or wooden rods. Creating and using head pins with special features is an easy way to add an extra little something to your jewelry designs–and they're just a few steps away from becoming ear wires. Or, make a small, tightly wound coil on the end of a piece of wire for a spiral-tipped head pin. You can also enamel the balled end for a colorful head pin. ![]() A ball-tipped head pin can be created by just balling up the end with a torch flatten that ball by hammering it while the pin is in a vise and you have a standard head pin. Eye pins are simple and self-explanatory enough: Using round-nose pliers to make a simple closed loop on the end of a wire turns the wire into an eye pin, with a custom-sized eye to match whatever your projects require. Whether you need eye pins or head pins–and we always need them, don't we?–if you have wire (preferably half hard), you're covered. Whether you make basic or fancy ear wires, take advantage of the wire tip of the year! Remember to create balance if you alter the standard fish-hook design or your earrings might not hang properly, and a Sharpie marker is just the right size for curving the top of your ear wires. Making our own ear wires also allows us to experiment with their shape, making them extra long, angular, or giving them a slightly curved back side for a little extra style. Coils and swirls on the front ends take your earring designs one step further with minimal effort. It's easy enough to make your own ear wires, but I prefer to make them because handmade ear wires provide an opportunity to go beyond basic hooks for something to hang on–they can enhance and be part of the overall earring design. Finish the ends with one last flourish of curled wire and/or a ball of silver (just touch it with a torch flame until the silver end balls up). You could also try stacking on some other kinds of beads or textured jump rings. You can go a step further and cover the S-shaped wire with coils of finer-gauge dead-soft wire, and punch it up even more by adding the extra embellishment of spacers and other metal beads. ![]() ![]() ![]() Hammer the wire just enough to flatten (with a ball-peen hammer), strengthen (with a rawhide or nylon hammer), and texture (with any metal hammer) the wire, and voila! That tiny bit of work just turned a short piece of wire into a handmade one-of-a-kind jewelry clasp. Bonus: By using handmade clasps and findings, my jewelry projects will be truly and completely handmade, all the way down to their utilitarian ends.Ī simple S curve of wire and a jump ring becomes a one-of-a-kind S clasp with even a small amount of work. So frustrating!Ī recent issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry helped me realize a solution: If I have wire, I have findings! It's fun and easy to make my own S clasps, earring wires, eye pins, jump rings, and so on–and chances are they're going to be more unique, more attractive, and more economical than manufactured ones. How many times have you been working at your bench and gotten so inspired, you outwork your stash? I can't recall how many times I've hit my jewelry-making groove and then come to a screeching halt because I ran out of a vital jewelry-making component, like unique clasps or ear wires.
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