Wire Jewelry: Make A Perfectly Formed and Gorgeous Coil Out Of Wire

Making jewelry is both well received as a hobby, a pastime, just as it has grown to be a viable artistic career. There are many directions a person can take should they desire jewelry making for either of the above reasons.

As a crafter or hobbyist, making beaded jewelry has traditionally been one of the best places to start learning. Another, more sophisticated arena for a careerist jewelry maker would be lapidary although that entails considerable learning and produces a sophisticated and higher end jewelry product. Lapidary is frequently combined with traditional metalsmithing as stones and gems, given their cost, are married with precious metals that metalsmiths rely on. This is its own market and tends to be highly competitive targeting the higher end of the jewelry buying market.

For those that choose to try out jewelry making and start with beads and wire, learning how to make wire jewelry is often the next logical step in their learning and skill development. Like many jewelry making arenas, making wire jewelry is a vast area with many different techniques to learn to produce a wide variety of different kinds of jewelry made from wire. For anyone, hobbyist or aspiring jewelry making careerist, who wants to learn wire jewelry making, there are some very simple and basic skills that need to be acquired first.

One of those essential skills that falls under "wire manipulation", the most critical thing to learn, is learning how to make wire coils that are perfectly formed.

Winding wire around a dowel or similar object is obviously the quickest and best way to make wire coils. Plastic handles of all circumference will easily provide a whole variety of different sized coils.

So, what do you make with wire coils anyway? Bracelets and cuffs and wire necklaces can be made from large wire coils. Earrings and pendants can be made from smaller diameter coils as well. The more you learn about jewelry making, the more uses you will find for all these wonderful wire coils that you'll make. Fill them with beads for simple jewelry pieces.

You'll want to start out using one of the thinner gauge wires say, a 20 gauge wire before you try making your coils with a 16, 18 or higher gauge wire. You'll also want to use anything but a wooden handle or dowel as the wire tends to grab into the wood. So, choose a plastic or metal stick, handle or dowel to wind your wire around. Hold one end of the wire flat against the winding implement and carefully start winding your wire, trying to get the loops on the coil as close together as possible. If they're not perfect, don't worry.

Once you've wound the full length of your coil, leave it on the winding implement and using both hands, push the coil together and then release it. See how much better it looks? This simple step will help most of all of your wire coils immediately straighten themselves out.

In the event that you've used a heavier gauge wire for your coils, a plain old kitchen knife will help to even the coil out. Just insert the knife between the coils that you want to separate or straighten out, wiggle it slightly but firmly and the coils will even out.