Crafty-Pants-Saturdays! How to make a ring out of wire and glass beads

Crafty Pants Saturday!!

(And don't forget to scroll all the way down to enter the rafflecopter giveaway for the pretty ring I made in this tutorial!) 

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STUFF YOU NEED: 

"Fun Wire"- This wire can be found at ANY craft store (MINUS Wal*Mart's craft section.) It costs about 10.00 for a package, which, in my opinion is a GREAT deal. That's a LOT of wire to make a LOT of rings with! This wire is important to use, as opposed to regular jewelry wire, because it's plastic wrapped. It's only a 22-24 gauge, which makes it very pliable, and soft on your hands. Regular jewelry wire can get really hard and rough, and can stain your hands when it's wet/sweaty. PLUS, this wire comes in awesome colors!

Jewelry precision pliers. This isn't 100% mandatory- you can do most of the curlicues and swirls with just your fingers, but...

see the tips of these pliers? they are perfectly round, and tiny- very good for wrapping your wire around to make a perfect circle. Also, as you get closer to the base of the pliers' nose, the circle gets wider-so, if needed, you can wrap the wire to make bigger perfect circles.

Wire cutters- any kind will do.

BEADS!!! Glass beads look prettier than plastic, in my opinion. It's easy to spend tons of money on specific strings of glass beads- I have done it, and it's not really a good idea. You can buy a box of bulk, mismatched glass beads for 10.00 at any craft store (including Wal*mart) and I feel it forces you to think outside the box, be creative, and so on.

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Making Your Ring!

1. Choose your wire color and your bead.

Here, I have chosen a rose-gold colored wire. This isn't an exact science, so I won't use exact measurements. All rings will be one of a kind anyway, so, it all depends on how much embellishment you want. Remember, wire is like hair- you can always cut off more, but once it's cut, that's how short it'll be.

Cut a strand of wire that is about 17- 20 inches long. If you have exceptionally big hands, you might want to make it more like 22 or 23 inches.

From the CENTER OF THE WIRE, wrap the wire around the largest part of the finger you intend to wear your ring on TWICE. Make sure it's loose, not snug at all, or your ring will be too small.

Slip the ring off your finger, keeping it coiled. You'll have 2 rings of wire with long tendrils going off either side. 

Take ONE side, and weave it in and out of the ring coil- serpentine like. Only go HALF way around.

Then, with the OTHER wire, wrap the other side of the coil the same way until they meet in the middle.

It's a good idea to have the wires exactly in the same spot at the top or even overlapping past each other just a tiny bit. You should have a ring like this ^^^ - you can wrap it tighter so that the coils are next to each other,  which is fine. Just remember that it will take a WHOLE LOT MORE WIRE than  the measurements I gave you.

Put your selected bead onto one of the wires. Either side is fine. Straighten the bead- which might mean that you need to pull it up so that there's a small length of wire between it and the ring.

When you have the bead straight, wrap the wire going through the bead tightly around the ring 2-3 times right next to the bead to secure it in place. Do the same with the other wire on the other side.

From here, it's all a bunch of fun! Embellish your ring any way you want. You can make it simple, or make it elaborate. This curl shown above doesn't use an end of wire, it's just held with the jewelry pliers and wrapped around itself.

Don't be afraid to wrap the wire over the top of your bead, or to wrap it around. It is best, though, to keep designs and spirals and curls TIGHT or you are more likely to bend the wires out of shape when wearing it. Make sure that after every couple of steps/embellishments you wrap the wire tightly around the ring to secure your designs in place.

If you feel like you're done embellishing and you still have too much wire, go ahead and cut it. You will want to end your embellishments with a curl, made with the tool, to tuck the end in nicely- you do this by holding the end of the wire with the tip of the pliers, and curling it around. (Shown in many of my other examples below.)

These rings make EXCELLENT birthday/Christmas/Valentine presents for girls- particularly from girls to their friends. Heaven knows it can be expensive to try and get presents for all of them. This is perfect!

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Some ideas and inspiration!!!

I would truly appreciate some pins and stumbles of this blog post. Thanks, to all my amazing fans!

THIS RING is a perfect example of curling in an end- see it?

You can also do this without ANY beads at all! Just layer 2 colors (3 could get pretty fat pretty fast, though) and follow the steps up until you put on the bead. From there, wrap the wires around each other and embellish accordingly!

Now enter to win the darling ring I made in this tutorial!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway



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