Free Jewelry Tutorial

 

Headpin Mini Tutorial

 

I hate starting a project then realizing I don't have enough headpins to complete the piece I'm working on. Here is a quick and easy tutorial on how to create your own headpins.

In this tutorial I am using 1½ inch of 26 gauge wire. Pretty much any gauge wire will work and the length will vary in regards to the size bead you are using. I am using a 3 x 5mm bead. Typically you would like the wire to extend at lease ¾ to 1 inch pass the end of the bead when it is inserted onto the wire after the end curl is made. This will give you enough wire to create an average wrapped loop.

If you have any questions please leave them in the commend section below and I will answer them to the best of my knowledge. :)

Step 1

Step 1 - Prep and cut 26 gauge wire to 1½ inches in length.

Step 2

 Step 2 - Hammer the tip of your wire about ¼ inch in.

Step 3

Step 3 - Hammer nice and flat; make sure both sides of the wire are hammered this evens out both sides. Also if there are small mars from hammering it may smooth it out slightly. 

Step 4

Step 4 - With your round nose pliers curl the flatten tip into a complete curl.

Step 5

 



Step 5 - Gripping with the flat nose on each side of your curl, then roll your wire onto itself.

Step 6

Step 6 - Tightly curl onto itself 2 ½ times.

Step 7

 Step 7 - Gripping your wire just below the curl.

Step 8

Step 8 - Still gripping your wire, using your thumb, push your curl back onto itself slightly. This will even your curl onto its center point. 

There you have it! A homemade head pin.

Enjoy!!! 

Thanks for your interest.

 

First post for Year of Jewelry 2011

Cat Eye Pendant

I'm so excite to have joined YOJ 2011! It is going to be fun, exciting, a great learning experience and challenging all at the same time. For those who have not heard about Year of Jewelry it is where a group of jewelry artist come together (virtually speaking) and make one piece of jewelry a week for one year. They give you a weekly theme that you can use if at you choosing to help get the creative juices flow.

So this week's theme is Complementary Colors. As I explained in my posting I had a few hiccups along the way but all in all for the most part I'm happy with the design. I added a purple silk ribbon to tie the piece in with the weekly theme. Truth be told the ribbon is actually orangy red that I transformed to purple in Photoshop. :)

A little about the piece that I submitted, it is a 100% sterling silver with a beautiful 12mm round faceted citrine focal bead. To add a little more design element I used two small deep yellow tourmaline and two small clear smoky quartz faceted beads to try and help give this piece a little more dimension. It maybe hard to tell but top handle area is 3 - 20g wire wrapped tightly together with 30g wire using the Soumak weave or Plain weave as Barbara Berk explains on her resource page. After doing that weave a good portion of the length of the three 20g wire I attach the focal bead as I pulled the wire tight to my amazement the wire just cradled right around the focal. I continued the weaving in a little different fashion to add a little more detail. After attaching the accent beads I filed and curled the edges for yet some more detail. Hope you like and I'm going to try my hardest to keep this blog up with my weekly postings to Year of Jewelry. Thanks for reading!

Heather
www.heathermorales.com

Unique Wire Wrap Pendant for Baby Shower Gift Murrieta Ca

I was invited to my husband's cousins baby shower late last month. As I was going through her Baby's R Us registry and realizing everything was pretty much bought. I really wanted to give her a gift that would stand out a little more and was unique, being that she is blessed with a lot of friends and a very large family, I felt it was almost impossible. Then I realized - duh I make wire wrapped jewelry and pretty darn good. Still headed out to grab a few things for her soon to be baby boy for tradition sake. Then went to work on designing her a custom one of a kind necklace that hopefully in 15 to 20 years, when she come across it, it will take her back to that special day of her baby shower that she spent with all her friends and family. Which was awesome and the cake her mother-in-law made was completely amazing.

The necklace and pendant is 100% sterling silver, the beads are a mixture of new jade, purple aventurine and light turquoise that are strategically place to enhance the lettering. The "b" and the "y" are around 1 1/2 inches in length using more than one strand of wire for the frame. Soldering the center ring that each letter is connected to, I wrapped randomly (some what :-) couldn't be to random) the three different kinds of beads to add some more blue. Finishing it off I curled the ends to add a little extra detail and connecting everything with a little thinker gauge jumprings in case the baby tugs when she wears it.

Sorry for such a blurry picture. I was in a rush to get pictures and after uploading them to the computer most of them were blurry. :-(  If you would like to see more of my jewelry, please do not  hesitate to visit my website at www.heathermorales.com - Cheers

Netted or Needle Lace Pendant

Next Class I'm teaching at Bead Island on Nov. 7thIn Murrieta, CA

It’s funny, I’m looking back at my only other two post and both of them are featuring copper pieces, honest I do work in silver. :-) Just check out my website www.heathermorales.com
 
This pendant is my next upcoming class; I know it will be fun and challenging at the same time. (for me at least) Once you know the techniques it is an easy concept. But knowing how to work the wire is what takes a little more time and practice.  There are two parts to this particular piece the first technique is called a netted pendant or needle lace or I’ve use the term buttonhole stitch (it’s the same concept). The netted weave uses 28 or 30 gauge wire, I'm not sure if I would go any larger in gauge but I'm sure it can be done with the proper tools. You attach your wire you’re stitching/weaving with to a base or frame wire which needs to be strong enough not to bend under a little bit of pressure. I like using 18 gauge wire.
 

NOTE: If you are using sterling silver as your base wire, after shaping it to fit your stone or bead, you can put it on a steel bench and with a mallet lightly tap the silver. You don’t want to flatten your silver that is not what we are trying to achieve. By tapping the silver with a mallet it cause vibrations to run through the silver and it actually hardens it. Hope this little tidbit of info helps. :-)

 

The other technique on the bail in this piece is, as Barbara Berk refers to as, the Soumak weave or a variation of it. It originated in the country of Azerbaijan which is south of Russia and Georgia, north of Iran and boards the Caspian Sea.[1]  This has to be one of my favorite weaves, especially when you add in 4 or 5 base wires to weave together. It’s very clean looking with quite a bit of detail.

 
Another  thing I’ll be going over in this class is, when you use 28 or 30 gauge wire, especially repeatedly bend this small of a gauge wire, it can become very brittle and snap. Instead of ripping it apart and starting over when this mishap happens. I can show you how to add new wire to continue the weave with it looking clean and not so obvious.

I’m really excited to teach this class and if you live or happen to be in the neighborhood on Sunday November the 7th please stop by Bead Inland in Murrieta, CA. The class is only $35.00 per person plus supplies.  The women are always a blast in the classes and I really enjoy their company. Hope to see you!

Bead Island

25359 Madison Ave
Suite #108
Murrieta, CA 92562
951-461-1071



________________________________________
[1] http://www.barbaraberkdesigns.com/html/resources.html

Inspired by Alice in Wonderland

It's been a little time sense my last post, so breaking out of tradition here I am.:-)

This piece is one of my newer pieces and it was created after see the movie Alice in Wonderland. I absolutely love Tim Burton’s style!
The chain was inspired by Nancy L. T. Hamilton she is an awesome jewelry artist who has some really great video tutorials on her website. The center pendant is a design I created. It definitely was not easy using the 28 gauge wire on the sides, took me three times on each side to get it right. The center is created using the basic pendant wrap setting, with a couple of different twist here and there. After finding couple of really good free wire wrap pendent tutorials online (listed below) and reading through them a couple of times and making a few changes to the way I like aesthetically. I was ready to take it to the next level.

• http://www.rockhounds.com/rockgem/articles/wirewrap.shtml

• http://www.tumbleweedglass.com/cab.html



In the basic wire wrap pendant you would bind together 3 or more square wire, 21 gauge square, to create what is called a sheet. The number of 21 gauge square wire depends on the width of your cab. Usually you would have one sheet of “so many” wires that is bound by half round 20 gauge wire four times along the sheet and you would wrap and form this whole sheet (on piece) around your cab. But in the case of the piece above I took two sheets, both bound twice with the half round wire and then bound them together on each end (just under the spirals in the picture above) again using half round wire. The rest of the wire extended out past were the two sheets were bound, I did a basket weave using the 28 gauge then secured it against the main frame.

The clasp is pretty much a story in itself… to be honest it was a pain in the butt. I didn’t want to use a store bought clasp, it definitely had to be handmade. So being handmade my main concern was security. I didn’t want it to come undone to easily, naturally. On top of all that, the clasp had to be the widths of the bracelet. I figured a hook clasp would be best, but not very secure. So in final thought I did a double hook clasp, or at least that is what I’m calling it. :-) After do about four or five of them I ended up sticking with the first one I did. It was the most symmetrical. Once I hooked the bracelet together with this clasp, I knew it was the best clasp for this bracelet. It won’t go anywhere, yet easy to do and undo.

My very first blog

I guess I will start with a little bit about myself. I was fortunate to have a very creative mom and she passed that creativity on to me. My sister got my dad's intelligence, but I'm definitely not complaining about the gift I got. :-) Creativity is very interesting, it is almost like you can't control it. When something inspires you or if you just have an urge to create it is like something starts boiling up inside, where you almost literally throwing up creativity. I hope you got a good visual on that one. :-) Right now at this time in my life the art of jewelry making is very fascinating to me. Upon researching jewelry making for the pass couple of years I've found out it is a very in depth craft with a pretty big Internet presents.

The purpose of this blog it to promote my website. www.heathermorales.com where I create and design handcrafted jewelry. Also to help others who want to start their own jewelry business with what I have learned threw all the research I have done. To start here are the two forums I go to that keeps me up to date on the happenings in the world of jewelry making.
Creative Wire Jewelry and Art Jewelry. Also here is a website were a lot of amazing jewelry artist post their creation each week. Year of Jewelry

Well I'm going to go for now, but I'll be back soon. But I can't leave with out showing you the latest pieces I've created. Hope you like.