How to Make Elegant Bracelets with Dale "Cougar" Armstrong

one basic bracelet two ways to wear it so gather up your favorite cabochons and gemstones crystals and pearls we're making elegant embellished wire bracelets today in jewel school [Music] hi welcome to jewel school i'm dale cougar armstrong and i'd like to invite you into my very first advanced wire jewelry making class you all know how much i love cut stones well today i'm going to show you how you can use your faceted gemstones in some really beautiful and elegant wire jewelry bracelet designs i'll show you how to twist and form wire into a basic chevron bracelet and then embellish it in two different ways we'll set a high dome cabochon to make this victorian bangle and incorporate crystals and pearls to create my anything cocktail bracelet [Music] now to be able to make these really elegant bracelets you're going to need more than just the basic four tools but as advanced students and this is an advanced lesson i'm sure you already have most of these tools now is a great opportunity to get them out and use them now as you know the basic four include a good set of flat nose pliers round nose pliers and as this is an advanced tape you probably already have yours marked or scored of course we do need wire cutters for chain nose pliers today i'm going to be using two different sizes one of them is the type that you would more than likely use when you're going to be making the pulls of wire on top of a cabochon they have more of a short more blunt tip now i'm also going to be using a very very thin fine pair often called needle nose of chain nose pliers and you probably realize we're going to be using these to make very tiny tight rosette embellishments i do have another backup pair of chain nose here which you probably have as well now in addition to these regular tools i'm going to be adding today a pair of split ring openers now believe it or not this is the only procedure i use this one tool for if you have it great if not i'm going to show you how to do the same step without having that tool now i do have an optional use here for three tools of which you may have all or one so i'm going to be talking about and showing you how to employ your three step loopers your six step rounds you know i love this tool and the larger pair of double barrel bale pliers now in addition to that you're going to get to use your ring mandrel and just for shaping purposes you probably could use a ring stick as well of course wherever the mandrel travels so goes the mallet we may need this we may not depends on you know if i mess up we also will need our automatic wire twister otherwise known as a drill i also have something different here today many of you in live classes have seen me with this same knife i've had the same one for many many years it is so dull okay that you can't even cut cheese with it kind of breaks off but i also have a way that you can use a plastic knife i'm going to be telling you about a new tape today as an advanced student now you need to know all the options as usual we will be using an ultra fine point marker as well as the handy pin vise because you never know when you need to get twisted and besides our ruler which is a necessity we're also going to be using a cloth measuring tape today as i explain my formulas piece of t-shirt a polishing cloth to protect your fingers you are advanced you know how to straighten wire and i have a couple of extra shaping items today this is the wooden bracelet mandrel depends on what shape you want to make your bracelets my favorite bracelet mandrel we'll talk about using found items and to protect my eyes as well as to be able to see tiny details i have my pair of magnifiers reading as well as my favorite optimizer is with the 1.75 lens now of course these are wire projects so we're going to be using a variety of different gauges and shapes of wire today which i'll explain with each project and of course the pretties look at this um i have some really wonderful tiny small silver beads here and some cut stones i also have some gemstone cabochons and some snap sets with some cut stones as well as regular embellishment stones which to me would include freshwater pearls and small tiny crystals and this way cool little spoon look at that isn't that great another found item with a perfect use okay so are you ready awesome let's get twisted making bracelets now this first project i call the basic chevron bracelet now chevron is made with the letter v kind of spread out and if we put two of them together we have this wonderful opening the whole idea behind this is so that we can fill that space with a variety of different toppings so this first project today i'm going to teach you how to make this bracelet and then we're going to take it into tada this is actually the beginning of the victorian bracelet so this is our first project and i've already cut my wires and twisted them so let's get started making the chevron bracelet [Music] okay first thing i need to see what i'm doing and you need to as well and protect your eyes and you'll notice that i have cut all of my wires to formula length okay and i have twisted two of them now the formula for this is wrist plus half an inch so if i were to measure my wrist or somebody else's i would measure oh let me get this out of the way first okay i would measure around my wrist right over this bone right here okay right over that little bone and i'm just going to put this around lightly okay ladies this is not like you're going to buy a pair of jeans that you want to fit into one day this is an honest measurement okay i am six and seven eighths almost six and three quarters so let's say that my wrist is six and three quarters therefore if i add half an inch my construction formula is going to be seven and a quarter inches long so i would make all of my construction wires seven and a quarter inches long you will need eight to ten construction wires and today i'm going to be using a 21 gauge square half hard wire and let's review how to twist here um the nice part about this is i'm going to teach you how to make one of my signature techniques and that is a herringbone design now herringbone design goes well with the chevron because it is a series of these okay that these that go up or like that they're all these and what we're going to do is we're going to take our automatic wire twister or drill i'm going to open the chuck and insert this 21 gauge square half hard wire no more than an eighth of an inch it's two little marks on your ruler tighten it and i'm going to use my flat nose pliers at the opposite end i'm going to hold like this not like this about two thirds of the way into my plier not inserting the wire any more than two thirds of an inch and i'm going to just hold this taunt and hit the button when it has the type of bead that i like on it i'll release open it up and if i hit my drill to go in reverse mode which right here okay i have a button and if i push it i'm now in reverse mode i'm going to take the second wire and repeat the same twisting procedure now if we take the one wire that i didn't forward and place it next to the other wire i did in reverse okay you can see this wonderful herringbone v pattern um now that you know how to do the herringbone i will tell you that one thing we're going to do with every single bracelet that we ever make in wire is to put at least one single twisted wire on each edge of the construction wires this is because as you can see the wraps that we're going to make to hold this together will not slide on a twisted wire however if you put them on plain wires without being twisted often with years of wonderful i love it wearing use the wraps will become loose and they will slip and slide whereas on twisted wire they will not okay so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to compose and make our bundle um in order to do that besides the wire i'm also going to need tape i told you earlier today i was going to talk to you about a new kind of tape we've used painters tape we've used quilters tape and today i'm going to talk to you a little bit about stencil tape one of my students came to take a course with me at the jsi here at jtv a couple of weeks ago and she brought this new paper tape called stencil tape well it's new to me it's probably been around forever but it's wonderful because it's not as thin as paper masking tape but it is a paper tape it has a terrific adhesive that does not leave residue on my wire it has a really nice width so it's kind of easy to just tear it in half what you're going to do is you're going to choose your favorite tape and you know sometimes you might switch like i do and you're going to prepare two pieces no more than three because you should know what you're doing by now so prepare two pieces about an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters long and then you're going to take your herringbone design and place them on either side of your plane wires now it's up to you if you want your v's to run in one direction or one up and one down on each side and you'll notice here that my wires my twisted wires are just a hair longer well if you followed my instructions and you read your directions first you'll notice that these are a quarter of an inch longer than my regular wires because i need to pull those to make the lovely chevron that we have on our bracelet and in order to make my clasp attachments long enough i had to add additional wire here because that chevron doesn't take up much but it will take up some of the overall length of the bracelet okay so after we have this about right try to get one end as flush as possible of the center wire as that is and then you're going to tape near both ends remember that you have to see your shortest wire [Music] okay so the bundle is done let's go ahead and measure and as normal you should have your ruler so that the inches are facing you nothing has changed we've just moved along i'm going to make sure that the shortest end of my wire is at the number zero which is why we had to see the shortest wire end and i'm going to measure in half an inch and mark across my bundle which happens to be right at the edge of my tape that's good i don't have to move the tape okay and rotate this like a propeller so i'm still looking at the back which is now where my marks are and again i'm going to measure in from the shortest wire at the other end half an inch and make a mark across my bundle now i'm going to measure the distance to find the exact center between those two marks and the really cool thing about this is if you're not real good with fractions you don't have to be watch this okay i have i'm showing six and a little bit over six and a half so what i'm going to do down here with that six and a half is i'm simply going to slide this down so that i'm splitting the difference and now there's a little bit up there in this little bit here and there i go my center is still at three and a quarter now your center is going to be the center of whatever your wrist plus half inch is okay now to make the opening for the chevron okay as you can see i have a couple of wraps here that i've made okay in order to do that i'm going to have to measure one and an eighth inch on each side of the center so let's take the mark we made at the center put it on any whole number i'm just going to use the number three because it's easy and i'm going to measure down one full inch plus an eighth which is two little marks on this ruler on each side of that three all right there we go okay so my wrap wires by the way i have cut four of them as in your written directions each of mine are five and a half inches long and i'm now going to begin wrapping my bracelet bundle i'm going to begin at one end on the mark and work toward the center i need a minimum of five wraps i might put on six or seven your choice and then i'm going to move to the second wrap and again work back toward the first one the same as we did in the other bracelets dvd i need to leave the middle completely open because that's where i'm going to put my beautiful cabochon and then on the other side of the opening i'm going to work away from the center and then down at the further end i'm going to work back toward the center so if you look at your diagram that comes in your written directions you're going to see exactly what i'm talking about okay i'm just going to review really quickly because this is advanced okay but it's you know if you're not quite ready for it this is a really good thing to work up to okay using my flat nose pliers at the end of my square wire okay always using the same gauge of wire for the wrap wires as i did for the main construction okay i'm going to fold this over very tightly on the edge of my tool i'm going to offset it to my left i never want to cover up my hook okay it's always angled the direction i'm coming from this is the back i'm going to hit it here come to the top and support it so i'm keeping my whole bundle together index finger it's the only time it gets to touch this wire notice i'm down here at the base i'm going to simply bend that wire 90 degrees in essence over the jaw of my plier as well as over the side of my bundle i'm going to rotate this again like a propeller so i'm still seeing the back i'm going to hold my bundle with my flat nose pliers anywhere on the right that's comfortable because i'm right-handed left-handed people simply reverse what i'm doing um there really is no other way it's pretty easy okay and then i'm going to use my thumb down here at the bottom to tell the wire where to go and i'm going to hit it at the bottom because remember that's the only place this wire is going to bend is at the corner and then come to the very top of my bundle which is at essence at the top of my bracelet i'm a little high there we go okay use your thumb to push this wire 90 degrees over the top so you're making a nice 90 degree angle every single time and i'm going to continue okay like this and repeat and i'll repeat the mantra one more time right now you'll see on the front i have two wraps to show one two now continue wrapping until you have six wraps to show [Music] okay when you begin and end these wraps i'm going to show you something that you're going to find very cool i hope that you can use to end your wires many many different times i'm going to grab onto the end that i just cut with either my chain nose and my flat nose pliers i'm going to grip the end and i'm going to roll my tool while pulling so if you picture a uh a flat like a like a a board okay and then as you hit them with your pliers you're going to be mashing that end and then curving it all right so i'm going to and this happens really fast okay grab onto just the end roll my tool and curve the wire what i've done is i've taken the bur off that wire and i've given the end a little direction if you can see that or not maybe maybe not oh yeah there we go okay and now if i just hit that at the bottom corner with my tool tada that is smooth as silk all right so i'm going to go back and do that to the first one [Music] all right there you go you can employ that technique on all of your wire jewelry if you desire to get rid of the rough ends okay so i have to make sure that i'm going to do six wraps at the other end but remember you have to proceed from one toward the other you can't just do the ends and forget the middle um and then i'm going to do the second one third one and on to the end here so go ahead and get your wrap wire get your things together and let's go ahead and wrap this basic bundle together [Music] there we go we are wrapped okay so go ahead and remove the tape from your bracelet we can save it for later and check it out pretty cool all right so let me show you how to finish the ends of this bracelet and then we're going to make a really cool clasp and attach it now as i mentioned before okay i still have some tape let me get that tape off there okay we needed a minimum of half an inch on the extra sides however we are going to be pulling our chevron so i'm going to pull the chevron first so you can see how little it really does pull on these wires and as i mentioned before if you have a pair of split ring openers okay you can use these if you don't have split ring openers it's okay you can use your hands so if i were to use my hands on this which is going to give me a more gentle curve not quite as pointed as this bracelet here okay actually this one yeah this one was done with the split ring openers and you can see the back of this one is not as sharp i actually use my fingers on this okay so if you're going to be using your fingers simply put them on each side of the twisted wire okay plus one so you can be actually pulling six wires three on each side use your finger and just pull them apart okay if you want that really nice crisp angle i'm going to use the split ring openers so what i'm going to do is i'm going to do this on the back side so that the flat part of the split ring opener is against the front because i don't want to mar the wire i'm going to come in here about three so i am on my center i have my split ring opener positioned okay and i'm simply going to support my bracelet by holding the other side and pull straight out okay now repeat on the other side okay so now we have something that kind of looks like this okay which is going to um give me an inspiration for a necklace i'm going to show you a little bit later on okay well let's put it like this so you can if you flip back you can say oh yeah that's what she was doing okay but you see the center isn't really going to matter because i'm going to take my cutters and i'm going to cut it yeah it's okay so we have three wires pulled on each side and now i'm going to cut the middle didn't fall apart it's all good and we already know that we need to hold our wire wherever we want to make a shape so i'm going to use my flat nose pliers and place them directly over and parallel to the wrap right there okay i'm going to be able to grab these center wires that i had cut and bend them toward the back or the inside of the bracelet 90 degrees straight over the side of the plier jaw let's do the same thing on the other side all right and guess what now i can go back and i can finish pulling my chevron where it needs to be use my hands to shape my bracelet and there we go all right that's how you do the chevron now what am i going to do with all these ends well i'm going to use the same method to finish off the ends of the center wires inside the chevron as i am going to use on the ends so you'll be using this several different ways today afterwards of course you'll know what you're doing and then you can use this to end large groups of wires on anything i'm going to use my thumb because i want a soft angle to press these wires down toward the bracelet but notice that i have left enough room in there so i can get cutters in there okay right in here so let me use my cutters and remembering everything i'm going to keep is from the flat side on i'm going to place them on these extra wires so that they are about one wire width longer than the wraps that they're going over and repeat that on the other side remembering to use my thumb to make a soft angle get my cutters in there and cut these so that they are about one wire width longer than the wraps they're going over okay and the fun part now comes into using chain nose pliers um you can either use your blunt nose or you can use your extra pair i'm going to use my extra pair and the idea is remember what we just did to get rid of the sharp ends on the other side okay i'm going to do this with my chain nose pliers on all of these wires at once so you want to use a very smooth movement and you'll notice i'm going to you probably can't see but i will tell you that i am putting these ends of wires into my tool probably no more than a millimeter maybe 1.5 and notice that my tool looks a little bit funny because it's angled so i'm keeping the bottom jaw of my tool parallel with my wraps underneath and i'm going to just roll my hand several times and what i'm doing is i'm deburring these wires and shaping them with a slight curve at the end okay so can we see that right there okay and this only goes to prove another point the wire is only going to bend at the corner so after i have this shaped i've deburred it i've told the wire where i want it to go now i'm going to hit it on the corner which is the only place it's going to bend with my flat nose pliers and they go directly down look at that okay so i'm making a very nice smooth edge with all of these wires at once i'm going to do the same thing on the other side there we go just to flex it you can run your hand over that smooth the silk okay go ahead and repeat that on the opposite side of the chevron [Music] okay so now you have finished that part and it was a lot easier than you thought okay let's go back to the two ends and we know that i need my long wires on the outer edges to make my connections all right so same procedure as i used on the center wires of the chevron i'm going to now employ on each outer end [Music] all right so we have now basically finished our bracelet except for the connection ends in the clasp let's clean up your workspace a little bit and if you have read your directions earlier like i'd asked you to um please get out either your 18 19 or 20 gauge um round dead soft wire now if you're using a 16 or an 18 yes i said 16. or a 19 gauge be sure you use a dead soft if you're using a 20 gauge you have to kind of use a half hard because otherwise it won't hold up all right so i have straightened my wire and i'm actually using a an 18 gauge round dead soft i'm going to double cut the end meaning i don't want to have any burrs on my end i'm going to measure down and cut one length that is three inches long this will be for my hook and i'm going to have to double cut this first end again one of those little finishing touches where your work should be looking more professional okay and my second piece i'm going to cut is two inches long so the hook and eye clasp is basically three inches for the hook and two inches for the eye [Music] okay and here we get to use some of our fun alternative tools okay for the two inch piece which is going to be the eye okay let's look at this okay you see this hook and eye right here it kind of looks like a stirrup and then it's got that really great hook okay to get that stirrup look i like to use either my double barrel bale pliers or my six step rounds if i'm going to use my double barrel the larger section i'm going to make this on the larger barrel of the pliers if i'm going to be using my six step rounds i'm going to make this on the second largest barrel of the six steps okay this is really cool and easy because you don't really have to find and measure the center you just kind of put it on there and then bend your wires together okay as you are bending these and making a u all right let's do that i'm going to mess up on purpose there you go you see how one wire is longer than the other well that's pretty easy to remedy considering this is round just bend the other wire toward it bend the shorter one back the longer one there we go and we have a perfect view just another little tip okay thinking now that the eyes that you're going to make on this clasp eye are going to have to be large enough to contain two 21 gauge round twisted wires at the same time so i'm going to look at my round nose pliers and most of you have my book or you have followed me in the past and you've marked or scored your pliers and i'm going to find the size that i think is the perfect size to make my loops with which in my case down here is going to be oh probably my second mark from the bottom and remember to make a nice round and not the letter p we put the end in so that you cannot feel it and then simply roll the tool when you can't go any further release your grip spin back around tighten up again to grab more wire and continue to roll and you'll have a nice little perfect circle just like that okay you're going to repeat this on the other side so we have something that kind of looks like this okay and then to get that really cute shape we're going to go back to either the double barrel bails or the six step rounds and i'm going to put the center part of this back on the smaller jar like this i'm just going to push the little legs toward one another okay and there is that cute little shape that we all love and now for the hook what i'm going to use my round nose pliers now you don't want really skinny pointy round nose because they won't be able to handle the wire and to find the center of your wire which is actually at one and a half inches it's just so much easier to place the wire in the jaw of your tool and then place it on any whole number and look on each side so i almost have this i have to move it down just a hair in that direction there you go makes measuring easy okay now to make this hook you'll notice that my wire is near the very tip this is because i have to press on both sides near the tip to get that really tight u that i desire so let's press on this like here and okay i've got this really tight tight tight u okay i'm going to keyhole this for those of you who followed me in the past you know what to do for those who don't now that we know how to grip our tools and let go and keep them in the same place which is why we have marks okay i'm going to put my tool in here i can spin this easy i'm going to spin it around until i can't go any further because the tool's in the way so i'm going to tighten up and dip now i actually have a drunken letter p okay i'm going to go into the other side of the p the same location and bend it down now it's a little bit more balanced okay let me fix what that is and when we're done okay it kind of resembles a uh the top of an old-fashioned keyhole or better yet a cotter pin so maybe i should call the cotter pinning instead of keyholing but you get the idea okay so that's actually makes the lock of our hook okay and i'm going to use my three step rounds now again you can use your regular round nose pliers or you can use the second barrel on these six step rounds but i like the three step loopers for this i'll show you why okay i'm going to place my lock just inside so that the end of the lock is just sticking out okay i'm going to just roll the tool until the lock meets the other side and then this is way cool i'm just going to loosen my grips bend my tool around and look i have a perfect shelf that i can just bend my legs slightly over isn't that cool okay all right so at this point we want to make sure that the legs on both sides of our hook are the same length which i'm absolutely amazed mine actually are if yours or not just remember don't cut them any shorter than they are but they do need to be at the same length okay and to finish the hook i'm going to go in between with my flat nose pliers i'm going to go between the legs and up to where i put that little bend in okay i'm gonna hold my pliers right there holding that wire and i'm going to bend this leg the one i'm holding out 90 degrees okay now let's repeat that on the other side okay so you kind of should look maybe something like this one of my legs is kind of crooked i'm going to go back in and take that out while i make the new one there we go and again i have to make the same size eyes at the bottom of this that i did on the eye clasp so choosing the same step that i have scored on my round nose pliers i'm going to go below and i'm going to simply roll these in actually that's a little bit too much let me go up one more notch yeah okay and then roll your tool when you run out go back grab a little more close it up and we're kind of starting to look like an anchor here okay repeat the same process at the same zone on the other side okay and he's going to look a little bit like this okay see how it's kind of funky wonky all right that's perfectly normal i don't want to mess around with my tools because i know how to fix that which is going to work harden it slightly which is something that's good using my flat nose pliers i'm going to simply make sure that my legs are on the same plane and it looks like my legs the eyes on them are a little bit too close together now to change that i'm simply going to use my round nose pliers and watch this okay i can go into one eye and simply roll my tool look at that okay the other side and let's roll the tool there we go so now it kind of looks like an anchor so my hook and my eye work let's go ahead and make the connections on our bundle add the hook and eye do the shaping and it will be finished okay now to make the connection loops you're going to love this really this is pretty cool so i'm going to bend both of the ends working with each pair of wires as though it were one wire toward the front of the bracelet okay i'm going to make the one that's farthest away from me oh probably another 10 degrees lower on an angle i'm going to repeat this on both ends okay so now i'm going to make the connection loops that are going to go into the loops on the hook and eye and i'm going to choose a place on my round nose pliers and seriously guys making bracelets similar to this many many years ago is when and why i started scoring my pliers okay these are the same scores i've used for almost 20 years okay so i'm going to take this pair of wires make believe that it's one i'm going to place this in my tool okay i'm just going to roll my tool okay now when i just roll my tool you see i form that way cool open eye all right let's do this again on the other side keeping your round nose pliers on the ends of the wire in the exact same position and because you're going to find oh no the other piece is like so close it's going to run into it well just keep rolling and then simply bend your arm down like that okay and when you release you have the same shape however it's not exactly where you want it to be so use your flat nose pliers and move the entire unit where you want it to be that's all there is to it now besides making that in such an easy way you're going to love the way these things close okay go ahead and repeat the procedure on the other two ends on the opposite side of the bracelet [Music] okay so you got four eyes let's fill them up okay let's take the eye clasp first and you're going to place it inside those two it should swing freely if it doesn't swing freely either bring your legs together or bring your connections together or spread them apart wherever it has to go in order to make it swing freely okay a good working clasp is very important to any bracelet i'm going to show you a way that people would like who live alone or with arthritis can put these bracelets off and on by themselves okay so to close this remember i said you were going to love it well think about this right now we are near the end of this project those wires have been twisted worked bent and they're going to break it's going to be now well if we don't move them a lot chances are they're going to last for a very long time so we just bent them forward rolled them back and now i'm going to close them using my chain nose pliers and you'll notice i have my pointy needle nose really fine tips of course none of the tools have teeth i'm going to go back on my connection zone here just about a third to a half of the way and watch this i'm just going to roll the tool that's it and it closes it right up okay do that on both of your connections here okay if they're not quite level same thing just use your flat nose pliers to put them on the same plane done cool it was easy huh all right so now we come to the hook and i do have to tell you that i have seriously made and sold at least a thousand bracelets in any design over the years and i have only ever had one person ask me to reverse the hook so if you look at the bracelet that we're going to end up making up you'll see the hook and eye you'll notice that the hook is on the outside okay watch this if i open this up and i'm going to and i'm i'm right-handed all right i'm going to put this on my right hand with my left hand i'm going to put the hook at the top okay so now with the hook at the top i'm actually using gravity to keep it down and i got the little eye over here so watch this i'm going to use my index finger and my thumb and simply squish the bracelet and use my index finger to flip the eye which puts it right over the top and this way you can take this bracelet off and on with one hand also notice that our bracelets are oval therefore if we are working on computers and things we don't want a hook to dig into our skin so we want it on the outside um something else too is that uh a lot of people say oh what about something really loose like crochet well you know what anything is going to get stuck in crochet so just be careful what you're wearing with what so i'm going to for that reason put my hook on my eyes so that it is facing the outside or front of my bracelet you can always change it later and then i'm going to simply close that on make sure my connections are in the same plane and that it's swinging freely now we get to shape it so to shape something like this i'm going to use my favorite bracelet mandrel one i've been using forever and ever and this is an oversized medicine bottle okay being this hard but flexible plastic i'm going to use it mainly toward the end which is the strongest area and i'm going to take the end of my bracelet with the outside facing out the back side is going to go against the mandrel i'm going to hold the end of my bracelet with my thumb on the wrap i'm going to grab on to the other side and i'm going to simply bend the bracelet okay as far as i can go now if i stop i have this nice little arch thing so i'm going to go to the other side and repeat the procedure holding the side grabbing onto the wrap on the other side of the chevron and bend the bracelet all right so now i have like this little rainbow arch thing going on so i'm going to now reverse the first thing i taught you so i taught you first off how to straighten your wire correct now we're going to reverse the procedure and put the curve into the wire okay so beginning at the one end i'm going to do about every quarter of an inch all the way up to the wrap makes a big difference look at the difference in that shaping okay and let's do this on the other side it's starting to look like a bracelet now and at this point i can connect it without pulling anything now after i have it connected you'll notice that i can't make this curve happen over here so let's use a tool to help us using my flat nose pliers actually this side isn't that bad i'm just going to get it right i'm going to go in here to the side that's kind of straight and holding on to those wraps i'm just going to give it a tweak there we go makes all the difference in the world okay and then coming up to the chevron same thing here i need this to curve so i'm going to use my tool to put that curve into it okay shaping of the chevron is easy simply put it back onto your really cool expensive mandrel and use your fingers to bounce on either side on the wraps so we put a slight curve in that not a major curve perfect just a slight one okay and then just go ahead and clasp it together and guess what your chevron basic bangle is finished we are now going to learn how to do several basically two and i'm going to hint around and tell you how to make others embellishments for the top so this is your basic we're going to dress it up so you can wear it many different ways [Music] okay so i am now ready to let you in on my secret how to create a victorian topping using a high dome cabochon for your chevron bracelet there are many many people have tried to figure this out from my book and i'm only now deciding to share it with you so usually i will choose the same gauge wire that i have already used for the bracelet to make the embellishment or the topping and what i have done already and you should have if you've read the directions is i have cut six pieces of my wire each four and a half inches long and i have cut four pieces of the 21 gauge wire each five inches long i'm going to take the five inch long pieces and center them between three each of the four and a half inch pieces and then i'm going to just tap on this and get it down to where i have about a quarter of an inch over on each side okay this one's not rocket science so that's good and now that i have my bundle i'm going to use the tape we've already had today and i'm going to tape my bundle near each edge [Music] okay so now we're going to measure our bundle and if we look at the bracelet we'll see that i am using a high dome cap as i've mentioned and that this is independently made and then connected to the bracelet okay but the whole trick is how do we get that arch in there how do we get that tall stone in there and part of it is by measuring number one the first thing that we found was that i'm using two different lengths of wire number two the second thing that we're going to find is i'm going to be using formulas totally different from those that you may already be familiar with when making the cabochon or pharaohs ring so getting my marking pen ready i'm going to line my wire bundle up alongside the zero and coming down and measuring we'll see yeah it might be a little bit over five so again i'm just going to split the difference therefore my center is at two and a half inches and now i'm going to slide that center mark to any whole number as usual i'd like to use the number three and i'm going to measure and mark 11 16 inch on each side of the center mark and that is one little mark past five eighths or three little marks after the half inch okay so your bundle should look like this now using the two wrap wires that i have cut which are each five inches long you probably won't need all five inches but if you want your wraps to be perfectly straight you might need to replace like the first one or something so i always give you a little more wire if you're making a project for the first time now as the norm i'm going to use my flat nose pliers i'm going to make a hook and i'm going to wrap from this side of center mark toward the end a minimum of five times to show and from the other side of center mark toward its respective end a minimum of five times to show which you will also see in the diagram in your written instructions okay now that your bundle has been wrapped go ahead and remove both pieces of tape saving them for the next project we won't need them anymore for this specific embellishment okay so now you're looking at you say yeah i can see the ring kind of maybe the next step is to shape this on the ring mandrel now we're going to want to shape this to get the initial u into the center of it on a smaller scale because we have 10 21 gauge half hard wires here that's a lot of spring when you put it together therefore i'm going to shape this about three times smaller than my desired size would be so if i wanted to make this around a size nine because i like that arch i'm probably going to shape this around a six and a half or seven so i'm going to take the back of my bundle where the bindings are and and where the center mark is i'm going to place that mark against the mandrel just above the size nine i'm going to hold this down with my finger if i don't keep pressure on this wire and it decides to go up it's going to make a cone head all right very difficult to get out i'm going to press equally on each wrap the same time and now i'm going to take this off the mandrel we hope that the wraps are apart exactly from one another yay check that out they are they're exactly across and yes the next step is kind of like making that ring so what i'm going to use here is i have my two weapons of destruction um really not you can see this knife is not even sharp enough to cut cheese anymore as i mentioned now i do have this plastic knife for my dinner last night well i didn't use it but let's see if this works okay the idea is to go in here between this top wire in the bundle and the next one and to see if i can get that separated well check it out okay i need to go all the way in and then i have to bend this all up at once like this that's where they might have a problem okay and then lay it down over okay so we have something like that and it kind of looks like a um like a little teardrop thing there okay uh don't worry about that now you see how it's laying completely down and flat except it's up above the wraps because i had to go over that wrap we're going to flip this over and do the exact same process on the opposite side make sure you only get one ring this actually works pretty well okay and the item that you use which actually could be a hotel room key it could be an old credit card or one of the ones they get they send you in the mail for fake um a thin really thin steel ruler the idea is they have to be strong enough though so you can lay the whole thing down like that all right you have to have it down flat now we're going to do a second ring on each side right so now i have done two on each side and we can see oh it's looking like a ring maybe she's mistaken no but i am going to drop this on the mandrel i'm going to use my mallet because the only place that i need to round this if we look at this okay you see how these fingers is sticking out you see that wrap right there and it's like this sticking out like this okay they kind of need to be rounded so i'm only going to hit them on the wraps in order to do that i'm going to hold my mandrel so i don't kill myself and i'm going to support it with my finger on the other side please be careful you can take the end of your finger off with one of these um i'm here to tell you it's not fun takes a long time to heal so i'm going to hit only on this wrap with this mallet and you can also see already see the difference see how this one's kind of rounded now and this one's standing up there we go so i'm going to take this off and flip it over because i know what side my hand likes to work on again i'm going to support the ring on the mandrel and i'm going to use the mallet to round those wraps there we go and the wires are actually starting to interlock a little bit notice that the ring kind of got bigger don't worry about size right now okay so now take this off and guess what you won't need these again for this project okay so now i have to make an envelope in order to make an envelope out of the four rings that we pulled previously i need to get the side wires out of the way so i can see what i'm doing so i'm going to use my flat news pliers to hold my wraps exactly where they are and then use my finger to bend these wires slightly out to where they were you see but i don't want to make a hard angle because i need them to slide through those wraps again repeat this on the other side now you see i can work in the middle and i think you're going to see the envelope i'm talking about between the first ring we pulled over which is the outer or larger ring and the second ring which is the inner or smaller ring we're going to make an envelope that we're going to be able to slide the cabochon into so let me get one of these there we go okay um by the way this is an 18 by 13 high domed corundum cab okay in other words lab sapphire now in order to get that stone in here well obviously the front is curved and that's going to go with the curve of the stone but the back is curved and the back of my stone is flat so i have to make a flat back to do that i'm going to use my flat nose pliers and watch where i place them this is so important okay and get this where you can see it i'm going to take my flat nose pliers i'm going to place them on the inside or smaller ring actually the second one we pulled over so that the bottom jaw of the plier looks like it would line directly up parallel to the wraps that are next to it you see that okay now i'm going to support this by holding the wrap and most important i'm just going to make a slight roll of my tool now if you look at that it really doesn't look like much okay it doesn't look like i did much to this at all but it started okay now let's do the same thing on the same wire on the other side so lining this up so that the bottom jaw of the plier is lined up parallel with the wraps underneath it and then supporting it by holding on to the wrap i'm going to give a slight turn of the tool okay now if we look at that shape you can kind of see that it's really not like straight straight right in here but it's just enough to give it a start now what i'm going to do is take my flat nose pliers and put it sideways using the entire length between the two points i just bent just like this see the difference okay now you see how easy that is you're going to now repeat that same procedure on the opposite side of the ring thing [Music] all right so we have the envelope being formed now with a straight side on both and a curved on both and here is where you're going to take your cabochon and slide it into the envelope now because this is a high dome cabochon what's going to happen is the second wire that we pulled over or the wire that we just straightened is going to push back remember i said that we just wanted these wires to be at a soft comfortable angle because they're going to be moving through this component but what you just did is you made a component out of the wraps with the wires so if we put this in here like this there we go after we get this started we have to start to lock this stone in now as i work i'm going to be working opposite diagonals kind of like old time changing a tire if you still change a tire for example i would do the top right and then the bottom left then the top left and the bottom right and as we work this together like this the stone is going to keep turning until we get locked in and it's centered right in the middle of what you still think is a ring okay so let me convince you that it is otherwise all right now the first four corners are most of the important lock-ins and what we're going to do is we're going to work with each pair of wires as though it was one wire to save you some time so let's begin working opposite diagonals i'm going to take these two wires on this side and bend them out to 90 degrees notice they are on the same plane as they were i've just bent them out 90 degrees and i'm going to go opposite diagonal and take the two wires on that side working them as and bend it out 90 degrees on the same plane now i have to tell the wire where i want to go so i'm going to use my chain nose pliers if you can see this shot right here you'll notice that the bottom jaw of my plier is about a millimeter above the top wire that's going over the stone okay and the reason being it's the curve of the tool okay if i make a bend and if i want my bend to be on a certain mark if i make that bend on that mark it's going to end up below the mark because of the amount of wire that the tool eats up when it rolls over so i'm going to place this about a millimeter above my mark in my head because it's going to take about that much wire to roll this over all right and now i'm just going to make one nice smooth move down 90 and you see it ends up right over those wires where i wanted it to go make sure that the back is headed into the center of the back a little bit like that so it looks more like um like the spokes on a wagon wheel and we're going to trim these so that they are about an eighth of an inch longer than the inside of the wire on the back that's on the back of our stone okay so let me cut that you can see okay and now i have to give it direction so i'm going to use my chain nose pliers and i'm going to just roll the tool i don't want to make a fish hook i want to give the ends of these wires a curved direction now what i'm going to do is use my flat nose pliers to put those wires where i want them to be okay let's see if i can do this so you can see what i'm doing all right i'm going to place the front of the pliers on the outside front of the wire i'm going to place the inside of my pliers at the top right above where the curve is now as i do this people i'm not mashing i'm going to tip okay so watch i'm just going to push these wires like this okay and all it did was my wire was already going on an angle so for example if i took this wire here and put a little curve on the end all right and then watch this if i hit it down here where's that curve going to go the curve is going to still continue to go where i had directed it to go right so if i give this wire direction by putting a curve on it there and just kind of push it it's going to go in that safe curved direction which is underneath and around the two wires that are sandwiching my stone thus drawing them together making it tighter around the stone all right concept done let's continue now i'm going to go to the opposite diagonal you still have to continually get that stone in there and again do the same procedure place your tool so it's about a millimeter above make your bend angle it trim it to about 3 8 of an inch longer than the wire on the inside give it that curvy direction with your chain nose pliers and then tuck it into place with your flats [Music] awesome okay so i have these two corners done go ahead and do the next two corners and then stop and i'm going to tell you how we're going to proceed with the rest okay so at this point we have all four wires down we have locked in the corners and remember i told you before that you were making a component well if you think about what we've just done the wrap sections from one section to the other the wires that go on top of and behind the stone on the top of the bottom are actually the first two wires in each of the four corners so what you have done is you have created your own component that will slide up and down on what normally would be the shank wraps of a ring so let me show you now because now we have to kind of size this thing all right after you get the first four corners on you've got that stone locked in the idea that we were going for here was to allow just enough space between the wraps to get that stone locked in and tight because if you look at this piece right here you'll notice there's not a lot of room between the stone and the wire it's really closed up nice okay and that's what we're going for right there so to make sure that that happens i had to use that smaller number to make our space now however we need to make this thing big enough so that we can cut it up and put it on our bracelet and to do that we're going to drop the ring type creature onto the mandrel and i'm going to slide and work okay you see how i'm sliding i'm working this until i'm about part way down and i'm really tight right there so let's take it out turn the ring over because it's going to telescope meaning that you don't have a graduated mandrel so the wires are going to graduate and i'm going to work this down again i want to continue until i have this ring at the size 12 okay so just keep taking it off flipping it over taking it off oh i'm almost there wow okay one more time and i am all right yep we're right here to 12 now okay so what i need to do now is mark um directly after the wraps on what would be the shank of a ring thing okay marking right there and marking right here okay now the reason i did that is because i don't want to pull any of my future connection wires too tight that would really change the size of things so let's just spin this on out and what i'm going to do now and what you're going to do is if you choose first of all you can use your pin vise and you can twist some of these wires however in the future never ever ever twist the first four that we just put across thinking about the fact that if you twist them they're not going to have a secure purchase over the wraps that they need to be so i don't recommend twisting them but yeah if you want to twist these go ahead get yourself a pattern using a pin vise this is fine i'm going to twist a couple here just to remind you what it looks like and how to do so inserting the pin vice doing a little twist there we go of course if you don't have pin vice you can make a similar stylish look by using your flat nose pliers takes a little longer and twisting so two different ways you can make twisted wire and then following the same procedure as we did before however working these each individually diagonally opposites i'm going to follow the exact same process of using each of these wires in opposite diagonals to lock the rest of the stone into place okay so follow along with me and then take off on your own remembering to keep your eye on the marks we just made on each side so that you do not pull one of these wires through too tightly [Music] okay as you can see i'm down to my last wire and i hope you caught that last little twist i did because when you get down to the end and more experience with this you can simply use your pin vise to twist a wire and then use the pin vise to pull the wire into place okay and if we check both sides we'll see that i didn't pull my wires out here i didn't pull my wires out here so i'm good to go and you'll see that this is entirely wrapped in now what i've done here is i've just taken my fingernails and pulled these wires out you don't have to okay as though you were making an arrows ring you can use zigzags you can do whatever however i like a lot of my stone to actually show so after you've done this whole thing you're like oh yeah dale we know how to make a ring really you don't look at that there is nothing like serious ring about that each ring size has its own formula and its own distance between this is specifically for the bracelet so what we're going to do now is get ready i'm going to cut it all right so after all that work we're going to cut this in the dead center or thereabouts yeah it looks pretty close to me no panic no freak okay and just bring these out on the sides if you bring these down you'll notice that you're going to still have a slight curve or a slight arch right there okay see that right there perfect and that's what we need to go over the top of the bracelet you see that nice curve that's where that comes from is right there so after i have this out and i'm going to spread these wires out a little bit more okay i still have my nice arch that's good and i'm going to separate these now working them in pairs so if i take two and another pair of two at each of the four corners i'm making a spider but he only has six legs i know it's not really a spider but visualizing helps there we go okay so now i have a six-legged buggy thing done in silver and blue and that's kind of cute but now i'm going to make this fit into the bracelet the two center wires we can actually bend up and get out of the way those are for your style of embellishments later yes there's room for your own style in here okay so let's get those out of the way and let's try to fit this onto this bracelet this is the bracelet that we just made out of 21 gauge square wire and this is 21 gauge here so we can actually put this in here but you'll notice i think that's way too big of an opening so i'm going to make this smaller simply by grabbing the chevron and pushing it together okay like that what does this look like yeah it's okay but i really want mine a little bit closer let's bring it in just a little bit more okay that makes me happy get yours to the point where it makes you happy no design is set in stone i'm just going to work harden this a little bit so it stays right there okay and the next step to getting this to fit is going to involve your pen you're going to be marking your spider's legs bending them into place okay so if i put this on here and i want that to kind of be centered where my leg wires i'm going to call them cross over the frame i'm going to mark where they're going to be bending over the frame just right there and i'm going to mark on the frame where they're going over it okay i'm going to do this on each leg [Music] okay so now i have all of my legs marked i have my places marked i'm going to stand this up so that it maybe will work a little bit darker later and i'm going to use either my chain nose pliers or my flat nose pliers most of you know i would use my chains for this because they have a sharp inner edge and a nice gripping power and they have a nice soft curve on the outer side so to do that again if i want my mark to be exactly where my bend is i'm going to have to place my tool about a millimeter away from my mark like this so that when i make my 90 degree bend i'm right at that mark okay we're going to do this on each of the four legs okay and you are left with a bug with antennas that's the way it's supposed to look okay we're gonna like give this little creature a name one of these days and now i'm going to place this onto my bracelet where i made the marks and it should go just like this okay that lines up exactly where i had it okay so the next step is to take my chain nose and flat nose pliers and to put my creatures legs where they need to be um to do that of course i've already i already have direction here let's increase that direction a little bit okay get that started use my flat nose pliers to put the legs where i want them to be permanently okay my other sides are straight through here get my antenna out of the [Music] there's way there's two okay should kind of look like that and to finish it off on the back let's go ahead and trim these actually you know if they were straight they'd be easier to trim but you get so involved with what's going on the front there we go so i'm going to trim these off and then use my little chain nose pliers i'm going to grab the individual ends roll them to deburr them give them the shape and then crimp them into place so that i have no sharp edges let's see i can do this so you can see what i'm doing yeah it's the same as what we did on the back of the bracelet before all right yeah if i do this and work backwards you can see it okay so this is the same process and then i'm simply going to use my flat nose pliers to put them in place and there is a complete connection right there okay so now i'm going to work opposite diagonals i'm going to do this one then that one then that one um catch up with me stay with me or rewind me and do it again because then we're going to talk about embellishments and then i'm going to show you some variations of this wonderful design so on to connecting the rest of the legs okay so now i have all the legs attached it's beginning to look like my bracelet actually it's pretty darn close the only thing that we have to left to worry about are the two wires on each side on the front that can be used for embellishments i'm going to use pearls to complete mine so if you'd like to watch me do that that's next okay these are large hole freshwater pearls so i'm going to pick a couple of pearls here i'm going to put one on my wire end is a little bent let's trim it that's good okay slide the pearl onto the wire look at that did you ever think you get a pearl on a 21k square wire all right and press that down now i have the option i can lock this in by tying it around one of the sides or i could just make a rosette at the end however because this is a piece i would like to be kept around as an air luminous for posterity someday i'm going to make my wire bend 90 degrees to one side or the other and let's flip this around grab the tail with my chain nose pliers keeping my finger pressing the pearl so that when i roll my tool there we go again just roll the tool it puts the wire where i desire it to go and i can just hit it with the flat nose pliers there's no sharp edges and the pearl is locked in okay let's find another pearl about the same shape close enough okay and again press that down use the end wire to make a 90 degree turn hold the pearl in place turn the bracelet over it's a little long okay i've cut this wire so it's about 3 16 of an inch longer than the wire it's going over and then use the chain nose pliers to make the curve do the round and then use your flat nose pliers to put it into place the pearls are locked on it's that easy you can add crystals you can do whatever you want i am now going to use these extra wires and i think i will twist those actually you know if you don't want these wires you can just take the pin vise all the way down to the bottom should i do that yeah i think i will okay let me show you something totally different okay i'm going to make sure that that wire is really really straight i'm going to put my pin vise all the way down here and tighten it up and i'm just going to twist that wire right off look at that it's gone you can't even tell i had a wire in there sometimes you need extra wire for construction and sometimes you don't this one works just fine i needed it in there so i would have an even amount of wires i'll give you a different way to twist this side we can actually use our drill for this just put the end in and hit it there we go trim it down so just reviewing how to make a rosette because i won't be making another one today using my needle nose chain nose pliers of course flat on the inside good gripping end round on the outside so i can make my shape grab right onto the very end of that wire simply roll the tool see what happens like it's so concentrating there we go roll the tool make that itsy bitsy little circle and then come in on the bottom wire at around five o'clock and roll the wire onto itself notice that i am true to my word i am working both hands together and then press that down and there you go okay you could also do that just with a nice little rosette just like that okay so there are two different ways that you can finish this bracelet a little more ornate or not so and let's get our projects and things ready oh yeah i forgot to tell you check this out look at this how many of you have a collection of cut loose stones at home you don't know what to do with them well just think you just learned how okay awesome we have two examples right here of using a cut stone in the same harness that i just showed you how to make around a cabochon the only difference is the back instead of making the flat back to fit the back side of a cabochon you will simply reshape that back or inner wire to fit the pavilion of a cut stone and then rock away literally with your cut stones in addition even though i showed you a high dome cabochon here is one that's even higher this is an antique vintage that i used in an argentine bracelet stunning becomes tomorrow's heirloom today and this is another variation that i made using argentium with 1420 gold fill and a gold sapphire pretty pretty stunning and let me show you this too okay remember during the directions while i was using the split ring opener to pull the bracelet open and at one point one part pulled out really well and the other one was only half done look it's the same shape what i've done is i added a faceted stone with the same setting and instead of continuing to make it into a bracelet i made it a little bit shorter and added chain so now i have given you several different ways that you can enjoy your loose collection of cut stones and wear them wear them oh my goodness our next project is going to be a little more detailed very elegant it's my anything cocktail [Music] bracelet okay now the anything cocktail bracelet first let me touch base quickly and tell you where this came from it actually came from my original design called my anything cocktail ring which i've been making since probably 1997 or 98 and it was actually published on the cover of a magazine in 1999. later on i really loved it i had people ask so i made a companion bracelet which is the anything cocktail bracelet that we're going to be making together today now it's called anything for several different reasons it can represent by the colors you choose either a sweethearts anniversary birthday mother's grandmother's or those my favorite colors anything ring and it also can be made using a variety of techniques tease tur curve connect rosette intertwined so you can use any type of colors and any type of techniques to come up with this lovely cold filigree project thus the anything and you can take it from there today what i've done is i already have cut and measured and bundled my wires very similar to what we did with the cabochon that we used in the previous project the victorian bangle okay what i've done here is i have nine wires and each one is four and a half inches long with two of these wires being a five inches long and i have placed my five inch long wire three wires down on one side and three wires up on the other side so they're kind of again off center and off kilter from one another and this is going to be because i'm going to show you how to properly set and lock in a snapset stone which some of you have been asking me about now in addition to that i have already made my anything cocktail bracelet as you'll notice from this design it is very similar to what we have already made however onto this piece i have used 22 gauge square wire instead of 21. it's a little more delicate and you need to be able to get the wire through very small hole crystals so we're going to take this down to a more delicate bracelet using a 22 gauge square half heart you'll notice i've already pulled my chevron and i'm not cutting the wires in the center those are going to be used as part of the backing so here we already have two differences between this bracelet and the previous okay finish the same so i'm going to set that aside and let's get started creating our cocktail segment now the cocktail segment that we're making involves a snapset stone meaning this is a snapset okay a snapset head this one happens to be six prong one of my favorites is a little cup that will fit over a cut stone okay the nice part about this is it doesn't have any connections to be made into a pendant or to earrings therefore as a wire artist i can use it anywhere i want and i'm going to show you how to employ that today later on when you look back at pictures in my gallery and other items that i've done you'll be able to say oh yeah i know how she does that now so this is just a technique um right here i'd like to show you that i have two four millimeter cz stones already set in four millimeter round snap sets okay this is an eight millimeter round snap set with a cz already in it which i'm going to show you how to do right now the easiest way to set snapset stones i have found is to use tape i'm going to make two rolls of tape with the sticky sticking out i'm going to place one on the table and i'm going to place the second one on the end of my finger in just a moment now i have kind of made up a few rules about this only due to experience you can reuse these snap sets two or three times before they lose their temper and you have to throw them in the scrap bucket and seriously you can't do anything else with them so i'm going to tell you that for smaller stones okay if you're using um three four five six millimeter stones it's easiest to put the setting over the stone however when doing 8 9 and 10 i prefer to put the stone into the setting it's easier to get it centered and anything larger than a 10 millimeter well if i can't make my own setting i don't need to use it really these are just like the perfect larger size to be able to show you on camera so i'm going to take my stone and place it with the table down okay and the pavilion and culet sitting straight up into the air so it's upside down now i'm going to take my second roll of tape and place the snap set on here okay on the end of my finger while it is on my finger the first thing i'm going to do is going to look dead on and see if all my prongs are in the right position sometimes in shipping they get intertangled with one another and they'll pull out if something is a little bit askew i simply push it back all right now i'm going to get down here with my pieces i'm going to line up this snap set over the top of my stone and when i press down hopefully you will hear the snap which is where it gets its name but believe me if you don't hear it it did happen okay okay so you see i have this about centered over it making sure and i'm going to press down okay and as you can see my stone is now in its setting and when you go to check this you're going to want to look at the top and make sure that every little prong is sitting on top of the stone okay if every prong is not sitting on top of the stone you might have to go in there with a pair of needle nose chain nose pliers and kind of push the stone up or down like a fraction of a millimeter just so it sits where it's supposed to okay so i have these pieces parts ready i have chosen along with the champagne czs i've chosen a collection of just lavender beads and pinks and whatever we might throw something else in there later some pearls we'll add some of those you can add any type of things that you want you just have to remember that this is a small tiny intricate weave cold filigree so do not overcrowd it okay so let's begin um as you can see i've taken my 22 gauge square wire and made the bundle that we just spoke about the only difference being between this and the one that we just made is absolutely nothing i still have used 11 16 of an inch on each side of the center the only difference that i have made on the bracelet besides not cutting it is the fact that the distance from the center to each wrap on the side is one inch instead of one and an eighth this is all written in your written follow-up directions along with a diagram so let's just watch listen and learn i'm going to take the back of my bundle where the mark is and again i'm going to place it on my ring mandrel so that the back is against the size seven hold it down so we don't have a cone head press equally on each side when you take it off the wrap should be across from one another okay exactly the same as what we just did in the victorian bangle you're going to bend two circles up one at a time on each side of this u shape [Music] okay we have the beginnings happening here once again we're faced with this um irregular oval shape and now we're going to do the exact same thing we did before put it on the mandrel round out the corners and then we're going to begin by wrapping the first four corners in [Music] once the wraps on your ring thing have been rounded you're going to remember to take two wires at each corner bend them out working opposite diagonals the same as we did before working with each pair so it was one wire now we're going to take all four corners out then i'm going to return the ring to the mandrel okay this is where things get a little bit different and i'm going to make this larger first because all right we've got this down to a size we need it at a size 12. all right now watch this okay in order to make a playground for you to fill in with the filigree you have to form the playground the larger outside circle should be sitting above the smaller inside circle which is actually resting against the mandrel so at this point here i usually take my fingers or my finger nails and simply spread these out actually it works better on the side without the groove so i don't get caught there we go okay i'm going to take this and turn it upside down try it again right and there you have the opening that we're going to learn to fill with our filigree and surprise designs so at each corner let's remember to use the chain nose and the flat nose and the cutters remember not to pull this wire down all right we want that up we want that open so i'm going to place my chain nose pliers so they are about a millimeter above let me get that so you can see it okay about a millimeter above the wire that is just under them making a nice easy 90 to the center you see it's sitting right on top of that wire let's get this around like a cartwheel center in the middle trim it to about 3 16 so we're an 8 8 of an inch longer than the wire is going over give the wire direction with the chain nose pliers and then tip the wire in okay just like that okay um that wrap came out a little bit sideways i'm just going to straighten it up a hair good deal now i'm going to continue wrapping each pair of wires on the remaining three quarters in just as we did before [Music] okay after you have locked all four corners in here's where it gets interesting okay yes this is the time to put it back on the mandrel because we need to draw some of these wires back through the wraps that we made giving us enough wire to be able to attach this to our bracelet later so i'm going to take this on here and spin it down remove it flip it over because the wires will telescope until i'm around a size 14 15. that's good and that still gives me enough wires here to create with so as we did before i'm going to use my pen and i'm going to mark on the shank wires of what would be a ring immediately after the wraps on both sides so that i don't put my wires through because i need a space to play i'm going to hold my wraps with my flat nose pliers and i'm going to bend these center wires back just a little bit remember we still want them to slide possibly later okay snap set time there is nothing that irritates me more than seeing jewelry of any kind with a snap set setting and stone where the setting has not been properly locked in or wrapped in the first thing a customer does when they come up to your booth is like oh what a pretty stone and they touch it how many times some people have to touch that before it's going to become weak or possibly they will catch onto one of those little prongs and bend it slightly back that you can't even see next thing you know a stone pops out you have to replace it that's not fun so let's just learn to wrap it in to begin with what i'm going to do here is i'm going to use my longer wires to do so so i'm first going to fan out all of the wires on each side of my ring and i have five wires on each side with which to play to decorate okay gonna check my sides make sure i didn't pull anything through right and let's get this down here all right so snap set i'm going to take one of the longer wires and i can put something on here because i think i want my stone to be oh maybe a third of the way over so i'm going to use some little tiny beads let's get some of these out it's like preparing a recipe what do i want to use these are two and a half to three millimeter large hole smooth metal beads i'm going to put a couple of very small large hole pearls out here too i might decide to use them okay so in order to keep my shape i have to keep my finger underneath the ring you see that the finger is here so i'm going to be shaping over it so i'm going to take this first wire and bend it over so now it's on the same plane as all my other wires it's not going to pull down in and i'm going to put something on here first so let's add a couple of these small beads now to get my snap set stone on here i'm going to go ahead and work with the large one first after you get that down you should be able to do the others with no challenge and if you'll notice on the bottom as i mentioned we have six prongs therefore you have a place where you can stick your wire underneath the stone and through the bottom so when i do this let's see okay i'm going in one side let me get these out of the way there we go okay i'm going in one side and i'm going to go under two prongs so you see i went in one side i'm under two prongs and coming out the other side i'm going to place this stone up here now i have my other longer wire here there we go i'm going to bend him down the same as i did before might want to put something on that to take up some of the space you don't have to if you don't want to though and now i'm going to slip this wire through the other side of my snapset stone all right so i have put the wire this wire through and underneath those two and then the wire from the other side underneath the opposite two on the opposite side then we just have to slide the wires through until the stone goes down to where you want it to be within the topping for your bracelet okay so if i want mine to be right about there i am dead on now to properly lock this stone in i'm going to have to wrap another wire around it one of the reasons why i chose to use two wires through the same stone is so i can use the shorter wire to wrap around the stone and i'm going to give this a little bit of a twist the twisted wire will have a chance to grab the prongs on the stone a little more tightly okay so now i'm going to take my wire and bend it completely around the stone underneath the girdle of the stone let me do this with tools so you can see it okay just underneath the girdle of the stone all the way around to a connection zone now the connection zone for anything that i'm doing can be anywhere except the flush ring the two flesh rings were the two wires that you pulled in that are the smaller wires they are the ones that are going to sit against the finger so we don't want to make any connections on the flesh ring you can connect to other wires you can connect to the top or the bottom which is the actual shape of the frame but you never connect to a flush ring so let's just put this one here now the tees curve and connect comes in here we did part of this with the bracelet connections to put the hook and eye on using my chain nose plier i'm going to grab on to the end of the wire okay i'm going to roll my tool to make a connection open it up slightly so i have this little hook and then put that hook over the edge of the ring thing and then you see how it's just over there okay and then i'm going to crimp it there because that's exactly where i want it so it's curve which i did tease it to where i want to go and then connect it to the wire and that is now locked in that stone's not going anywhere okay it's pretty solid so what i can do now is i can add other things to these wires using the t's curve and connect method i'm going to talk about them as i go and sometimes i'm not going to talk and just watch because i have no idea what i'm doing with this until it happens which i'm sure you as an advanced student know okay so let me do a um a twisted filigree here i'm going to put the end into my pin vise and let's make this tight notice i'm holding everything over here on the wraps keeping my eye on my marks and that's about as twisted as i want that to be okay here's a little secret i'm going to be using my round nose and my chain nose pliers because i know where i want something to be so if i want a loop to be in that direction i'm going to put my round nose pliers where i want to form the hook or the loop i'm going to twist it slightly to get it started i'm going to hold the space i need with my tool and use my finger to complete the shape so if i let go of the tool you can see that little shape now if i want to place it somewhere all i have to do is use my flat nose pliers to make it flat and then continue the curve by holding the shape in place using my finger to bring that up and you see how that filigree is starting to appear all right now i might add a little bead to that just for grins let's see if this little tiny bead wants to play on this wire okay now tease curve and connect up here at the very end with my chain nose pliers i'm going to make my hook it's going exactly where i want it to right over the edge so i'm going to put it there with my flat nose pliers which is the connection and we have just put this piece to bed okay so let's continue on i'm going to be doing some more filigree i'm going to be adding some more beads and pearls if you run out of wire the cool thing about this is the wires that we cut when we're making our connections on the side to lock it in you could actually twist those add things to them and connect them from one side to the other you can add more beads and things to this and make it as crazy confused or full as you would like by adding additional wires to this design and even though i said don't connect to the flush ring it's because i don't want you to get into the habit this is not a ring all right you might say oh dale i know how to make your ring well that's fine but you need to use the proper formulas because this is not going to fit somebody um with like a size 5 finger so keep that in mind a lot of my books and things have ring formulas in them but you can certainly adapt this to a ring design if you would like [Music] okay making my last connection here this is really kind of cool i just kind of get involved in things i've got a song playing in the back of my head and i just let it kind of flow as it's going to go because i really don't know what they're going to look like until i'm done with them so it's kind of impossible to do a custom order without just knowing colors all right so now that this is finished let's do the same similar thing as we did before i'm going to cut this in the back i'm going to spread it out and all of a sudden it becomes quite a lot larger than what you had thought you were working on okay very similar to what we did before go ahead and separate two wires on each of the four corners which with this pattern i've left you one wire in the center okay so very similar to the little bug i did before now i've got a crystal bug and because our bracelet is made a little bit different you'll notice that because of this filigree it kind of feels a little weak and that's why i leave the center wire in here to make my connections and look at that that's about the exact right size so i'm going to show you how we're going to make our connections which is kind of a review of before i'm going to show you a couple of different design variations and i have to tell you this is really kind of special for you for jewel school because i have never taught this bracelet to anybody never never this is a dale cougar thing it's a signature piece and i've never taught it so you guys are the absolute first well actually the people in the studio are the first but yeah i don't know if they can do anything with it or not so this is kind of an exclusive and if you remember correctly from before or if you skipped ahead and you didn't listen and you went ahead and just chose the bracelet that you liked first okay i will center my centerpiece on top of my bracelet make sure my legs are kind of all the same i'm going to mark on my legs where they're crossing over and we're going to need to make my bends i also mark either outside or inside on my frame so i know where i'm going with this when i go to put it together again okay so i have all my marks and just going to review really quickly what you're going to do besides chasing beads using chain nose pliers because they have a nice soft angle i'm going to place the bottom edge of my tool so it's about half a millimeter away from the mark where i want to make my bend and i'm going to just make a nice 90. i'm going to do that on each of the four corners at each of those locations okay then place your little crystal bug onto your bangle now while i'm here and i'm ready to go i'm going to have to cut these a little bit because there's no way that they're going to fit all of them between those wires without cutting them i'm going to use my chain nose pliers to give my wire ends direction by curving them so that they're going to head through the hole i need them to go through and we'll do this again from the back side so you can see better and working opposite diagonal seems to be the trick to keeping things centered and i guess i'm cutting those off so they're about half an inch long let me double check yeah they're right at half an inch long now on the back side you're going to be able to more clearly see what i was doing and then i'm going to show you how to finish up the edges it's a little different on this one because we do not have the open space that we did on the other however i had to show you both different styles or you wouldn't know what kind of stone to set on what kind of a bracelet so again we're going to trim those so that they're about half an inch long i'm going to use my chain nose pliers to give them direction the direction meaning i want you to go through that little space right there and when they do grab them and pull them through after they've all gone through go ahead and get them around to the back do a quick little trim and press them down so that they all stay in the same place [Music] there we go and then again on the top we have some extra things here you can attach crystals you can attach pearls i'm going to look at this one and say what am i gonna do i'm gonna put pearls on there okay i'm a pearl girl what can i say just a couple little pearls give it a tad by the way um i usually don't like to use bicones on this type of a design because bicones have sharp edges and those edges stick out beyond the bead itself and they're really sharp in their glass so they can break really easily and then cut you or your companion without even knowing what's going on so please be careful when you choose the beads crystals and or pearls that you use yeah i think that kind of dresses it up nice because we have such a long wire length here you can actually take this back in the same as we did before and wrap it in and under and around and locking it in place the same as we have done [Music] okay and the topping for the cocktail bracelet or at least the one i have made is now complete can you see how it's kind of like this really wonderful mirage of colors and gemstones and anything you can use anything in this i think this one came out pretty cool all right so to shape this kind of a bracelet because we do have so many cut stones and things in there it's kind of hard to use something like this because you want to use a mallet so i really do find that my little found item is pretty efficient again i'm going to hold on to the wrap right here i'm just going to hold on to the wrap on the other side of my bracelet and i'm just going to give it a curve almost to the center okay just that so similar to what we did before but it's a little different because the bracelet connection goes all the way underneath the center so again hold on to that end and hold on to the second wrap and just go around okay i mean we're almost done now look at that and you see the arch is still there that we put in by making that piece so i'm just going to use my fingers as we did before only down to the wrap on each side because this already has the curve which represents the top of the arm without a problem put this side in connect them when you can and then really you can like tug on these things and get them to where you want them to be okay the final touch is to use your flat nose pliers on each side set of wraps just give it a slight twist in adding a curve to an otherwise straight part of the bracelet [Music] there we go ta-da it's done okay let me show you a couple of other things that you can do with this design simply by using the variations that we have changed from one bracelet to another okay this one uses the technique of how to set a snapset stone and to lock it in place for a family or whatever bracelet all i did was i used three pieces of wire attached my snapset stones with half round wire making a wrap going around the stone crossing over on the back and so on to the other end i then inserted this into the same type of bracelet we just made very simple very elegant another idea here if you notice now the sample bracelet that i came in with is not the same as the one that we made because sometimes i don't put snap set stones into my designs it really depends on what you want to do if you want you can add extra beads to the sides you're totally on your own now it's up to you to use the techniques that i've shown you to create your own designs so take what i've given you and go get twisted for more information about the supplies and techniques used visit dualschool.com and if you have a question or a challenge just send me an email dale jtv.com i hope that you've had as good a time today in class as i have and now that you know the techniques it's time for you to take your collection of gemstones out of storage and begin using them to make really lovely jewelry have fun experimenting and playing with them and i will see you here next time in jewel school [Music] you

Channel: JTV Live Now

Views: 308,741

Rating: 4.8655791 out of 5

Keywords: jtv, jewelry, bracelets, jewelry making, wearable wire art, cocktail bracelet, chevron bracelet, bangle

Id: Ky42R_qMXtE

Length: 118min 43sec (7123 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020