Conversations in Wire with James Browning: Make A Wrapped Weave Bracelet With Soft Flex Craft Wire

[Music] hi everybody welcome to another installment of conversations in wire I'm your host James browning I am a sales representative here at the soft flex company we are a jewelry wire manufacturer based out of Sonoma California we do have a gallery that we would love to have you stop by if you're in our area it's open every Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. so today we're going to be doing a really quick and easy wire wrap I showed it off on our very important leader group on Facebook and you guys had a great reaction and so I decided to do this as the video for this week and really excited so let's go ahead and get started all right well welcome back to getting started I am really excited about this weave it's so simple it's basically two wires that are going back and forth over and under each other and then I have a smaller gauge wire that is continuous through this whole bracelet and it's using that continuous wire to just kind of join the two together and it makes a really cute like braid it looks like and you can add wires to this you could change the gauge this is a heaviest that we offer this is 18 but you could go up if you wanted you could probably do the same thing in like silver silk maybe that would be a fun challenge I might try that and it really just lends itself to like stackable bangles so here's another example of what I did it's the same weave so the same in and out but then I changed the color for the continuous wrapping layer and then I added beads to the outside so now it's this huge bulky thing and I doesn't so big I just made it a bangle I didn't even add a clasp to it okay so let's get down to what we gonna need today this is really just a hand wrap so you don't really need too many tools we've got the cutters so you can get those wires cut I have a pair of bent nose but you could use chain nose if you want and then for making your loops at the end pair round nose and these tools are available on our website WWF a calm and they are a part of our beginner wire wrap kit which I advise everybody to get you don't have the tools already this makes it really easy and simple so the size wire that we're using today is going to be 18 and 22 and you can change those around if you want something more delicate for the outside wires you could go down in size when I say down that means up engaged and then the inside you can change the color but I would always try and keep this at least 2 pages below the main wrap it lends itself to more that I don't know it kind of looks like a barbed wire I mean if those were cut off that reminds me of our clan I don't know what you'd call it them this is a wrap that I found online during my Pinterest searches and I just loved it so tell myself how to do it it's there's a lot of different permutations out there so you could definitely go search and see if there's another one that you like feel free to experiment that's what art is all about crafting alright so with our 18 gauge we're going to cut off 24 inches surveying all 2 feet and we're actually cutting two pieces of this and I'm a volley miss you can be more exact what you want is just like double the amount of what goes around your wrist just because you're going to be bending and looping and braiding so that'll take up some of this slack in the wire okay so I've got those now the other part of the wire the 22 gauge I'm actually going to leave on a spool and I forgot tool good thing I have my handy-dandy tool chest here but what tools do I always recommend nylon jaw tools these are mine so they are fairly used but we do have those for sale and they are part of the kit as well so I'm going to straighten out my wires off camera because they're very long and they don't want to hit the camera itself so and the 20 the 18 gauge wire you really do want to try and make sure that you rotate the wire when you are straightening it because it does have fins in all different directions on that from spooling and taking it off so just give it a good couple of X all right so I've got that all straightened out now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the two ends down here I'm just gonna meet him up and I'm gonna let them cross over each other because what we're gonna do is we're gonna make a little loop at the other end just by letting these cross and I'm just gonna pull them apart and when you have a good cross-section just keep reducing that loop down slowly and trying to make sure you keep it in half just makes your life a little easier until you have a loop about that big I would say that's about half an inch okay now the next step is to take your chain nose or your bent nose pliers and right where that cross is we're going to bend it that I'd say a 45 degree angle is what we want to do as we want those to uncross and become next to each other so you may have to fiddle with it a little bit that's okay wire is pretty forgiving just so you have a simple loop and the wires are straight next to each other okay this is the first the first step and go ahead and do the same thing to your second wire just so that it's ready to go when you are and if you want to you don't actually have to use the the players you could actually just send it yourself it gives you less of a bend less of a concrete Bend but it's there all right so we have our two loops now I'm going to take my 22 gauge I'm just going to pull out a good good portion there's this piece of wire in here that keeps catching on all night okay so I give yourself maybe a yard and because we're gonna do such small wraps you don't really have to straighten this out but I mean I would definitely get the big kinks out so just make it look neat my tools out of the way all right so we've got our 22 gauge and we have our first little thing here most benefit a little bit okay so I'm just gonna put the wire right on top and hold it down with my thumb see right kind of in the middle but not really so and I'm going to go over and behind so I'm basically wrapping over and depending upon which hand you are the wire should be on that side of your dominant hand on the spool otherwise it's going to get way in your way and you can decide how many wraps you want I'm going to do four is a nice round number however many you want try and end with your wire at the top so I've got three now three I'm doing one more so now this is four wraps but the wire is off to the top there so the important part of that is because we want that wire to go around and around the same way and always start at the same point okay now we're going to get our third loop and we're just going to thread it on the top one actually and to get into the habit of what's going to come next after you've gotten everything wrapped go ahead and take your tails here and bend them at right degrees to your work okay so you should have that for your first step I'm gonna take your time on this weave even though it's really simple it's just a good habit to get into to go nice and slow and there's a lot of wire so don't let it get too out of hand so we're going to take our wire and this actually should be behind everything okay so here is where we're at we've got the first wire with its little pokey OD bits okay and then we've got our wrap the wire is at the top but it's behind this leg here so that it comes in right where we want it and then I've threaded the second wire over the top and I'm gonna try and Center the rap part right here in that loop because when I bring my wires over to wrap it's not going to look too out of place for that second one now these first two are the most difficult part of this weave is just getting it basically set up everything else is easy-peasy and go slow with your reps make sure they're nice and neat [Music] think I'm gonna slip down around onions but you're still coming out the top and I still have four wraps okay and we're going to do the same thing we did on our first one and we're going to put right angles there okay okay so this is where we take our first legs here and we're going to Ghent leads this is the trick of wire wrapping you got to be gentle with it and make a curve see that okay and we're going to do the same thing that's other one or the best thing to do is to grab it all the way down at the end because the closer you are to work the more sharper you were your bins are going to be so if you take this it's going to be really gradual okay so I like that that's a good good start now we're going to wear that little cross is we're going to bend those out so that they're no longer cross but they're meeting and that's going to be where our wrap goes I'm gonna go ahead and do that wrap so here's one and don't let them squish together on you a bum side-by-side if they start to become a problem take your chain nose and give him a squish that flattens it out nice now got my wraps here and I'm going to take these legs and kick them out they can do the splits okay and then the next the top legs are always going to go on top this is where the weaving happens bring it down get a nice curve now you can slowly start to graduate your curves if you want or you can keep them kind of the same size and then just sending these so that they're no longer crossed now if you look I made a mistake here see how my wire wraps up and around the top here we want to make sure that the wire is not creating any sort of barrier to that next wrap so just be mindful of how your wires are going this wasn't too big of a mistake it's just a matter of tension and putting it where it needed to be it's not I changed the shape so just just be careful go slow [Music] and you know sometimes mistakes just actually become your project so what started out as a mistake ends up becoming the norm and you like it which might be the case in this just gonna flatten it down a little just to make sure that we're keeping it nice and smooth okay let's kick these legs out what's that guy's name [Music] van Damme always did the splits I like him jean-claude that's right well jean-claude these wires every time and now we're just going to make a nice gentle curve there see it's starting to come together now so the cool thing about this rap is that most of the time if you make your curves too funny-lookin the rap itself is going to cover that up so you'll be looking at that little rap since Durden I should also mention when working with wire especially when you have long pieces of wire it's really good to have an eye out or even eye protection as to where your wires are because I have poked myself in the glasses before so it's possible just be careful and the jean-claude van damme it know that sounds bad we won't say that anymore we'll just say jean-claude and we are keeping those first legs over the second leg so that we keep going from behind to the top and gives it that braid look it doesn't it kind of look like barbed wire lenka casa wasn't such a pretty start here but you know what that's what art is wonder if we should kind of bend this out a little something that's what makes it handmade my grandfather taught the little brother and I and my grandma how to make handmade lace and that was one of the things we always said when we were doing straightening out in public is that the Mystics make it handmade because machines don't make mistakes for consistency's sake remembering which how many wraps you did is that consistency helps with patterns if your patterns off people will notice that's really just this first couple of ones you have to watch so I'm going to try and finish this up really quick and get to the end so I can show you how to finish off all right so I have added a few more inches to this so almost done I'm just going to do just a couple more of these in case you didn't quite see the pattern so we've got our two jean clogs just doing the splits here so I'm taking the first set and I'm going over and then doing a nice gentle curve by pulling it down from the end and then I'm pulling the other one up and I'm just taking it down to where I want it and then since we don't want to wrap those two cross together we want to wrap flat we're gonna bend them out at that cross point all right and then we're going to take our 22 gauge wire that's been hanging out we're just going to do three wraps that's what I've been doing it's alright four wraps whatever tie to there's four wraps and I just squish it down if it looks like and they started to twist or something so I'm just going to take these last two and just split them out again and then a top two are gonna go over the bottom two see that's under I'm gonna go over and I'm just going to bend him out straight okay so that was my last wrap so this should be what you have at the end you have a long piece of braid you've got to split legs and your wire coming off so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my wire see how it's coming around the bottom here so I'm going to take that and I'm going to just do two more wraps right on that bottom there and then I'm going to just clip it right there at the edge okay no it's a little pokey so I'm going to take my bit nose and I'm just gonna kind of squish it down all right so that takes care of our 22 gauge wire now we've got these guys now I have a lot of wire left over you probably will not if you measured it for your wrist but if you do you can always hang on to these or make it longer it's totally up to you what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut them off I'm going to cut the top two of our splits which should be the bottom one of our tree so I'm gonna cut them about inch-and-a-half that gives me plenty of room to work with but not so much that it's in my way okay and I'm going to take my round nose actually for what I want to do I'm going to cut these a little shorter let's go down to quarter of an inch quarter Draft and what I'm going to do is I'm going to curl these from like a little bit from the front so your holes not too too small I'm just going to make a loop I do that on both sides now what I wanted to accomplish was to get these over this so that the loops are taking that last wire in that's due now on this side I wanted to come around the back so that my loop ends up coming forward okay I may have cut that one just a little too short but you know it's all about playing with it now basically with these last two layers we're going to wires we're going to do the same thing this will be much easier so we can just take these all the way down to like half inch and then curl on into a loop this is going to be a loop end of my catch now that was super messy and I expect you guys to take your time and get this to look much neater than mine but that is the gist of the ending kind of makes it look like little horns both ends are secured now with some of your leftover wire you can make a little like hook for your catch by taking some wire and bending it all the way in half and then being squishing this end part too which is always the hardest especially with 18 gauge and you can always grab on to it and go at it with your straighteners to kind of get those to come back to centre somewhat I'm just gonna take the end here and bend it around gently to kind of give me a hook shape now if somebody has bail pliers bill forming players they have a bigger I don't know what you call those pinchers somebody knows what those are called feel free to give me a heads up in the comments and that what I was going to say is that it gives you more space to create your hoop with so you can have like a rounded bail I'm trying to make this fancy but it's not my working but that kind of works maybe alright so on this one what I did was I took those two ends here that we are going to have when we cut this down and I made them into loops and just attached them so to do that again I'm going to cut off the ends here spread these out just a little so I can get my pliers in there it's gonna make her a little I liked making our little jumping okay now say we can't connect him like that so what we need to do is bend them down so I'm just hanging on to that and I'm bending this down and then I'm just gonna kind of bend them apart again so hopefully I can get them in probably could have made those just a little bit later and now I'm gonna open these up and read them on if I can't oh there's one let's just close that up now opening and closing jump rings and anything like that we open side to side right now what did I do I did put the wrong one on the wrong one I did okay let's try opening that up again sometimes when you're doing a project it can get away from you and if at any time you get frustrated with your work I just want to give up and you say you can't do this the best thing to do is to walk away I'll have some coffee or you know I'll walk play with your dog your cat kids whatever makes you feel calmer and when that is all done you can come back to your project all nice and fresh and try again this class is not my friend so what I may end up doing is redoing that class but you get the general idea now one of the cool things about working here is that there's access to all sorts of different things including wire I found out that a 30-foot spool of soft flex or soft touch whatever makes the perfect bracelet mandrel for a stiff wire because stiff wire has a spring to it and so if you gently wrap around your bracelet around the outside of one of these soft flex things it looks like it's gonna be too small for your wrist but it springs back out and it's nice and round if there's any spots you can just go back and kind of finger tighten or shape and remember at the other end we have this little guy that we just need to clip right off so now I'm going to go around the backside I just clip off as close as I can to the wire maybe front side is better I just don't want that poking out of the front so try and get it close so that when you burnish it down it's not going to be poking out and catching on closing stuff averaged out nice and smooth okay so pretend this clasp works I'm just going to use it to see I even put it on backwards this whole class thing is just a Shanda alright so there it is folks one braided style of wrap bracelet but the few mess-ups in there because we are all human and we are all beginners and some things so do not take those mistakes to heart just keep going alright as always thanks so much for joining me then really have fun hanging out with you guys if you like my videos please hit that subscribe button at the top that will make sure that you get notifications that we have new ones new videos coming out also hit a like so that I know that you watched it and you liked it and if you ever have any questions feel free to leave comments in the comment section below and I will get back to you as soon as I can all right well thanks for hanging out and you guys have a great day I you [Music]

Channel: Soft Flex Company

Views: 2,436

Keywords: soft flex, soft flex wire, flex wire, craft wire, beading, jewelry making, jewelry making supplies, diy jewelry, soft flex company, james browning, diy bracelet, conversations in wire, wire wrapping, wire weave

Id: 43a5OszO3bw

Length: 42min 14sec (2534 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019