Lunacy: Wire Wrapped Moon Tutorial

hey everybody i'm yvonne williams with back to earth creations and in this video i want to show y'all how to make your own lunacy crescent moon pendant which is just i don't know i normally don't name designs but this one i kind of liked it so lunacy let's get started to make this project you can use a variety of different materials but there are some tools that are going to be useful so i'm just going to go over everything that i'm going to be using in the tutorial links to all of these are down in the video description um if not the exact product the modern equivalent some of my pliers aren't in production anymore because i've had them for over a decade um but uh it's a it's a good starting point to get you shopping we also have links to our curated toolkit where we have a com comprehensive list of everything i really enjoy wire from parawire.com and uh in this video i'm going to be using 16 gauge and 20 gauge though i also really recommend their 18 gauge half round because you can get some very cool effects with it just kind of a different look um also from parawire alternately um you could use some of their enameled copper cores which give really nice color i'm particularly fond of their titanium toned silver plated copper core having something to shape your wire around can be really helpful these are just little bead containers but you can use whatever you have on hand prescription pill bottles water bottle caps um anything that has the size of the outer curve and the inner curve that you'd like for your piece you could even go quite large with it and make some really cool big like uh either statement pieces or sun catchers or i mean there's no limit to um what you can use as a mandrel and how you can make you know add your own touches to this style of a pendant so the tools that i'd recommend are round nose pliers i actually use larger and more petite tipped round nose pliers and kind of see the difference there between the sizes and the tips and then i also really enjoy my mandrel pliers but if you don't have these or mandrels you could use pens knitting needles um anything round and solid i try to not use very very soft wood um because sometimes the wire will bite into it and i won't be able to actually get it off of the mandrel so i prefer something that's like nice and robust to wrap around also flat nose pliers i like these guys because we actually took them on a grinder and ground one of the tips down super thin and then i really love these ones because i got them from rio grande and they're a stepped flat nose plier and i just like having that very small tip to be able to get in to tight areas i also have my bent nose pliers with thermoplastic handle modifications and two kinds of wire snips um you do not need the variety of pliers that we have here this is just i like these ones they're a little bit more sturdy for cutting through the 16 gauge and i like these ones with their very fine tip for getting into tight spots on thinner excuse me on thinner wires you can also incorporate a variety of different beads the only thing limiting about the beads that you could use on this are you need to make sure that they can fit on the wire um other than that follow your heart like you can you can have no beads or this one actually has it looks like no beads but has a couple of little silver lined clear glass seed beads um in there these ones this one has some opalite and some more of those clear beads and a green aventurine this is all glass and copper beads this is uh quartz and glass and copper beads like you can i mean this is just from this batch like you can really get very um creative with this and express yourself and stuff so if you're not into the colors or bead shapes or metal tones that i'm using by all means you know make you wrap your own wrap kind of stuff like it's um this is just how i'm doing it feel very very free to modify to your heart's content so to begin we're going to use our 16 gauge wire and this is american wire gauge and i'm to cool off about oh 14 inches i like to give myself a little bit more than what i think i'll need because it can be heartbreaking to uh have too short of a wire and pair of wires affordable enough even in the heavier gauges that it i don't mind um having an inch or two of scrap left over and so for this first step we're going to get the frame of the moon made we have some different options for how we accomplish the tips of our crescent moon this one is a little bit bulkier up here at the top but i also think it's really cute with that little curly q coming through but it does make it bulky coming along here at the top as well um this is probably the least tricky way of making the moon frame so we'll start with this one but um you know i'll show you the others here real quick this one here very very similar to the other to the other moon where we just have you know we start with this first bend and we have the two tines coming around and then we have it come up in between this is going to make a lot more sense here in a moment and it just hooks around right there then we have that wire travel back and make the bail and then we have the ones that are done in this style um this is like the other one but with half round wire which i think makes a pretty cool effect these ones are done in a style that's a little bit trickier with the moon and that's bringing the wires back and then making a bail up at the top but you can see it gives you our most petite tip option um if you like a really nice crispy tip um so we'll explore that alternative as well it can get a little bit wonky you could see how this one's kind of like what the heck is happening um so uh we're going to focus on the other style in this tutorial but i did want to you bring up that there are options there are always options like actually with this one here you can see we had one wire come up and make a loop and the other wire came up and we made a loop and then we started our wrapping around the neck of those two wires to hold the frame of the moon together so we have our about 14 inches of wire and i'm going to come in about a third of the way in from the end and i'm going to do just the tightest bend in the wire as what i can so i have my very narrow tipped flat nose pliers and i'm gripping our plier quite or gripping our wire quite firmly with the pliers and then i'm bending that all the way around and now from here the bot the hinge of this plier is not ideal for this so just experiment and see what you can find but this one i like that it has a box hinge instead of just like a scissor hinge because it gives me that little hole right there on each side which actually kind of helps me grip and grasp without the wire twisting too much and then i'm just going through and smushing this can really mar up your wire at first um like until you get the hang of it and even then sometimes it's just kind of finicky um but you can see that got it folded down really nicely if you get a lot of scratching in different things having some steel wool or like a dremel polishing tip can be really nice um but we're just gonna plow on through and have a nice organic look so but if you're working with enameled copper wire that can really be a problem so you'll want to be really gentle and careful with your pliers whenever you get that nice and smooshed down so now i'm going to use the larger of our two mandrels or two forms and this was this one is an inch and a half in diameter um and i'm just going to start pushing around our wire with my thumbs this is 16 gauge just in case we missed that and before i come too far around um i'm just going to use my work surface to push down on that tip you can kind of see there through because i want that really nice and rounded and then we're gonna go ahead and bring our wire almost full circle but you can see i didn't want like a straight part of the uh the tip i wanted that to come around and be nice and um nice and good so from here [Music] we are going to establish which side is going to be the outer like the big side of the moon and which side is going to be the inner curve of the moon crescent and i like to use our short wire as the inner moon crescent so i'm going to go ahead and place this on our mandrel this one is an inch in diameter and i'm just going to shape that around kind of went full full circle with it and then i'm going to grip and open so i'm gripping the inner and outer crescents of the moon and i want to just bring that and you can see it it's a little wonky there but we can we can figure that out making sure our inner curve is staying nice and shaped well and then coming in i'm sorry i think i went off the frame with that one so i'm going to repeat that motion so i have our mandrel in there and there's a little bit of spring back in the wire but that's normal but i just want to keep that tip shaped nicely and then i'm going to flip it so that the wire isn't in the way of itself and make sure again that that tip is nice and flush and sometimes it's just a little tricky and you can't get in there but we can also just come in with our pliers and just shape it around a little bit so now from here we can determine how close we want the tips of our moon together you could have it be very wide open i like to do a little bit closer tips on my moons but that's just me let me make sure this is actually still a good shape because there's so much opportunity here for the crescent shape to become uh kind of wonky so coming maybe three quarters of an inch away from our other tip i'm going to do a wider bend i don't want it smooshed like this one so i'm going to grip right there you could even use your round nose pliers for this but i'm moving up the nose of my pliers just a bit because i want it to be thick enough that we can fit our 16 gauge wire in the space that's about to be made so i'm gripping and giving that a nice 90 degree bend and then bending around my plier tip the rest of the way and from here actually still holding onto this with our pliers we can come around and give that a little bit more of a solid smush and that's going to give us hopefully a nice shape there at the top and then we can go ahead and shape that wire following back around the curve of the crescent and i'm still going to open this up just a little bit more like i want a little bit more space between the sides of my moon there we go nice amount of space in there um and so from here i'm going to snip about a centimeter past the tip of the moon and i'm going to bend this around like just kind of tucking behind so that it's coming up in between those layers of copper and then we get that positioned a little bit more i'm going to take my pliers and pulling the wire past where i need it to be i'm going to do a 90 degree bend and this is going to help whenever we come in with our round nose pliers to whenever we make our loop it gives us like a little bit of a stopping point and you can leave it a large loop if you want to be able to like hang a charm or something or we can come off to the side and curl around a little bit tighter like that and now come in i put my thumb over it to keep that piece from pinging but that squeezed our loop down nice and tight and then we close it up and now i'm going to recheck our shaping it's looking pretty good and now from here we can squish this these layers of wire onto that core and everything will kind of hold on together we could technically cut right here um but i don't much trust the wire to just hold itself together um maybe if we soldered that point which at this point in the project we could there's no like beads or anything overly heat sensitive on it um but i prefer a little bit more security and just making sure that it stays together and also if you don't know how to solder uh there are options there are alternatives to be able to get a nice sturdy frame without having to do any sort of torchwork okay so now for the veil i'm going to come back i'm going to hold right here so i'm going to kind of find the center line of our pendant i'm just going to hold that there and then bend this wire upward and i'm going to wait to make the bail until like almost last um just because we can wrap this and make it a little bit more stable so double checking our shaping one more time on both the inner and outer crescents and that loop does it gets in the way a bit but we can figure it out we're clever crafty people we've got this hopefully alrighty so we have our shape you could hammer it at this point i just like to leave it as is and we're going to come through now with our 20 gauge wire or if you're using half round you could do this with a half round i have pulled off an entire arm span so about 5 feet of this 20 gauge wire and i'm gonna find roughly the center of it so i'm doing that by bringing both of our ends together and then just pulling off to the side and there we go that's about middle um and i want to include some beads so here i have a 10 mil 10 millimeter blue kind of matte finish glass bead and again you can use any beads that you want just make sure that they actually fit on your wire that's the only like crucial part so we've threaded the bead on to the very center and i'm going to begin by holding quite firmly with my left hand and then just twisting around our bead with our wire so you can kind of see how that's building up a little bit of a cute wire frame around our bead and i'm gonna do that's two here's a third rotation then it just makes it look i don't know hugged that's pretty nice um and i'm going to i like to do large medium and small in my bead placement but you could make this however however you want but i'm just going to kind of hold it where i'd like the bead to be i have a little bit of a training bend right there and what i mean by that is now whenever we thread the end of our wire through our project and we start to pull through the wire settles where we did that kind of little training bend i don't know what else to call it like um but it just it encourages the wire to be like hey i want you to go here like it marks it and you can do that by hand or you can use your pliers as well now this is very very wonky for me right now because i'm working with like tripods and stuff all over the pliers normally i'd back out away from my desk a little bit and just work um just over my lap with letting the wires move wherever they need to without getting tangled up on everything so if you're getting frustrated by that you are not alone so trying to not wreak havoc with all the wire um i've wrapped around once on that side and now i'm going to wrap instead of leading with the tip you can also just push up through with the wire close to where you're working and then pull it through and then i'm just using my fingers you could use your pliers to pull that tighter and from here there's a motion that we can do i'm actually going to show it using a bit of scrap wire um where it's like the itsy bitsy spider normally i guess you do it with your how do you even yeah like itsy bitsy spider well we're gonna do it with our fingers where we just rotate like this and i call these my itsy bitsy spirals because it allows us if you pinch the wire between your two first fingers and we're just holding off here at the ends it allows us to make a very small loop now that one's a little more open than what it is this is a piece of 18 gauge square wire but you can see it just made a little loop like that and then we can take it and training it around again it starts to make a really nice tight little spiral and then once i get like the second layer done like that i'll just come through like with my hands and bend it around but that's a really fun plier-free way to start making an inline spiral meaning that you're not starting at the tip of the bead for the tip of the wire sorry so i'm going to take this we can bring it around just a little bit further this wire is already pretty work hardened i snatched it from my scrap bin but you can make some really cool actually spiral head pins like this then you get to there you can do a little bend like that start bending it around a little further and then you can smoosh and smush so there we have a little spiral head pin so bonus side project but that same technique can be used to make little spirals on our moons and this is where the lunacy aspect comes in is because it becomes just straight madness like there's some high functioning chaos here um so i'm going to wrap around i think a third time so we've got one wrap two wraps so let's get that third one through [Music] watch the eyeballs just in case keep an eye out for cats just in case and this is shifting around on me a bit so i'm going to scooch it back up to where i'd like it to be because as we get more spirals and things in here it's going to start really soliding up this moon and so i'm going to take it holding the wire in between my two fingers and make the little loop then we can tighten it down and you can see that's a much smaller loop on the 20 gauge wire and then just continue building around that spiral now that it's a little bit bigger i can just brace it with my fingers and building it up and around oh my gosh these wires though and so from there i'm actually going to just thread through from the back to the front and there's almost no rhyme and reason to this your moon is going to be its moon um just however you do so uh don't worry about it being like following exactly step by step but to stabilize things i do like to move in almost a figure eight where it's wrapped around the back and then around the front because it just it keeps things from shifting around as much i think and i'm gonna slip another bead on here but i have some little sky blue seed beads that sometimes do not fit so oh thank goodness and we can just add as many or as few beads as we like i like using the beads um it cuts back on how many spirals we have to do all the time which whenever the wire is very long like this is kind of nice you can see i'm just going to hold it there and then do bend and start twisting around it and again we're doing a little bit of a one-handed itsy bitsy spiral but i'm going to complete that came around from the back side over here so it's coming around on the top side here and i'm gonna almost like we're sewing or embroidering or something but instead of wire or instead of thread we have wire and so if we start to get a general framework with our beads and such snagging new [Music] pliers ah i recall why i called it lunacy it's a bit makes you touch crazy to um be wrestling with all this wire now i'm gonna come through with a six millimeter copper toned bead [Music] run it down the wire and i'm just going to sit it right there like kind of filling it in you can take the wires that you've wrapped on and kind of smoosh them closer together make everything be all friendly [Music] and now holding that nice and secure i'm just gonna sew through again with our wire just like that and i don't want to pull too tight because i don't want to be distorting the shape of our moon but and on this side i'm actually just going to wrap around on the back because again i'm just making it up as i go along i'm going to grab another one of these four millimeter sky blue beads ah that one fit too what a good day [Laughter] some days none of the beads seem to want to fit some days i don't want to jinx it but some days they fit all right and so now and i like to do that just on the tips i don't mind wrapping around both sides it gets kind of tight to try to do that continued figuring so sorry for all the scratching and stuff but that's just the sound of crafting so there we are and we can come in doing again another itsy bitsy spiral [Music] okay and now i'm following along and we can kind of start nestling our wire in between where we already had wrapped if you want and right here i'm going to start another little spiral and sometimes if you want a lot more control over where the spiral is going to end up do another little training bend and that way when you twist around that kind of helps the wire to decide yeah i think i'll make a spiral there whereas sometimes it's a little uh haphazardous okay coming around then you can just kind of build your spirals that way bringing this up we can now i didn't wrap around that bead initially so we can just kind of place and wrap oh goodness like if you can hear it these wires are trying their best to tangle on darn near everything so be patient with yourself and be patient with the project and you've got this so coming up and around and you can make this however dense or loose and almost airy looking as what you would like i have a i have a tendency to prefer the denser looking ones but that's just me [Music] nuts i feel like a hundred of us could all sit down and make these moons and we'll have a hundred different looking moons and uh i love that i absolutely love that so i'm gonna wrap around the back side again so rules are there as a guide frame like the figure eight oh i'm gonna try to do this but they're meant to be broken deviate as necessary so untangling the wire every step as we go um i don't wind my wire up on a bobbin because i want to leave it as unworked as possible um so that way it stays nice and soft but you do you i know there's some really cool bobbins out there for like putting your wire on for doing kumihimo i think i pronounced that correctly probably not though so just bringing this around pull it nice and tight i like that i like that a lot i'm going to travel across the back and come up through right here because that's looking a little bit bare to me and if i use up mostly this wire on this end of the moon then whenever we come through and do the other end of the moon it shouldn't be so darn tangly i'm gonna try to get in here with some pliers just to kind of lift that wire up and out a little bit so that i can then position this new wire around it like that i like that a lot yes yes yes there we go do we put another bead there yeah let's put another bead there so i'm gonna grab oh did we do a balloon or a copper i really love color especially with this is um bare copper wire that i'm using so what if this becomes like oxidized or if we if we decide to oxidize it with like liver of sulfur or if just you know time does its thing um these blues are really going to pop so i like that okay untangling that a bit the uh less glamorous realities of wire wrapping okay and i'm gonna thread this through right there just because it looks like a good spot and that's as good as reason as any by keeping my finger in here in the wire it can help to keep things from getting kinked or twisted up in a way that maybe you don't want and now i'm going to we have done the bulk of the wrapping on this side so i am going to just get that a little bit more manageable so now we get to start in on the other end hooray so this is coming down and around we're going to push up through the back pull our wire through and i'm actually going to stack just right next to it pull through and start a spiral we're getting our nice second rotation going bringing that around and i'm gonna add a blue bead right here one of our little four millimeter ones thread that on oh gosh it fits too this this is a day that's going to go down in the record books as the day that all of my beads fit now that i've said that you think stitch but it would have been nice okay so we have that bead on there and i'm just gonna wrap around so so much of this is just um kind of deciding as you go to be like oh we've got a little bit more space here let's put in a spiral or fit in a bead or you know what have we gonna feed this one up and through i have given up on any effort to make that both sides match um that's just me personally because honestly i don't think i could replicate that if i wanted to so i'm just letting it be what it is and i'm going to come through with another blue bead oh see it got stuck but just on the kinks of the wire so we can straighten that out and bring it down and using the bead as the center of our spiral coming around and around to the back side then we can kind of smush all that over there we go i'm going to make another spiral right here again that really wants to be open but we can stabilize that later on too um i am going to add our six millimeter copper bead now so we've got that slit on there bringing it around and i'm going to focus on grounding this wire that will be part of our bail so i'm going to wrap i've got a little bit of a training bend going on there i'm going to wrap around pull and then a second loop nice and tight a bit of a training bend and sew through and pull there we are and now from here i'm bringing that over and just wrapping around do we do that once yeah i think so um i'm wrapping it around the edge of our bead but then just gripping it with my thumb and i'm going to feed this wire through i don't want that to turn into a kink in the wire excuse me then we can wrap around the back side and start getting some more spirals and things going so again it's just let your chaos flow and make your piece but uh i think this is a lot of fun and so again wrapping a little bit more stabilizing around i didn't plan it but this is what's happened and now i feel like i can comfortably add another blue bead and complete the tip okay let's grab ourselves bringing our bead into position and then doing our itsy bitsy spiral just building that up and around i'm gonna wrap around right there and then we can make our spiral here at the tip and sometimes it wants to kind of wiggle off track you can just just get some smush going on and you've got this there we go and now we can start back wrapping now it looks like we have a bit of distortion here and that's going to be okay it's part of the organic feel of this this point's a bit pointier than that point and a way that we could avoid that is we could have established both of the tips first and worked on the tip and then towards back this back towards the center um could have been an option but i also i don't mind a bit each of my moons coming out just a little unique just a little lumpy and weird because i too am lumpy and weird okay so we still have a good bit of wire on this side so i'm going to take where did we come through over here i'm going to take this wire and finish it off [Music] coming up and through and i'm using my thumbnail to kind of train this wire down around yeah there we go wrapping it just around that side i'm going to feed up and through through that opening and if you follow along with this video and you'd like to share your work with me um and a lot of the other folks in our craftalong club uh please tag me on instagram you can just tag bachelor's creations or craft along with them whatever you prefer um and also if you'd like to be featured in our newsletter um send me an email with as high quality pictures is what you can manage um of your work and we can feature you in our weekly newsletter uh as kind of we're putting together a student gallery of all y'all's beautiful creations so uh that's pretty exciting i think but yeah you could send it to us in an email the image as an attachment to back to earth creations yahoo.com um and if you have any questions you can contact us on our website um backdrop creations.com we have a contact us form and you can kind of fill that out or just shoot us an email just however uh it work best works for you oops bumped the tripod so sorry so i've snipped with about 20 millimeters maybe two centimeters just a hair under and i'm gonna use our round nose pliers to make a spiral just coming in because that's even though this is a whole bunch of spirals you don't have to worry about getting it getting caught on your clothes very much because there's only one loose end like whenever this is all said and done there will only be the two loose ends so it's not like it's going to be a super snaggy pendant and i can vouch for that i've worn this over both knitted and crocheted style tops um well not this one in particular but this style and uh i like them like they're very um easy to wear so bringing this around i'm gonna thread through right here but yeah gosh just having that other wire out of the way is so nice and now we're gonna come up and around coming back down through like this is um a very challenging design for those of us who have very meticulous wrapping styles or like having a plan uh and sometimes it can be it can be growth to to push outside of your comfort zone in a in a um you know an artistic medium like this so even if it's not your favorite thing when you've made it if you're like um if you have a business where you sell your artwork and stuff just because a piece is like with my business just because something might not be my favorite doesn't mean that it might not be completely and totally perfect for one of our clients or customers so kind of just embrace it as for what it is and be like well this is this is life now and uh go with the flow of it trust yourself in your creative process i think you'll be surprised by um by what you can create and also it's perfectly okay sometimes to totally hate your piece and want to bury it in the backyard like i get that so but just feel what you're going to feel wrap what you're going to wrap you've got this and you can kind of straighten that around a bit i think this one's done i think i'm good and so from here i don't know if i want to add another little spiral so i'm actually just going to bring this around and snip with just a few millimeters of wire left over and then curve that in and then smush it as sort of a closed loop and that way you don't have to worry about any of those pokey bits or snaggy parts and so now how how the heck are we going to do this bail let's figure that out this is where i like to use my mandrel pliers you could also use a pen or a knitting needle like i had mentioned before and i'm going to be using the eight millimeter end just because i really like that six millimeter works pretty well also but um you don't want it to be so big that the pendant is out of balance with the bail but you also don't want the bail to be so small that you can't string it up onto a chain or something sucks actually let's actually do this one with a six millimeter just to see how that compares because i've done the other [Music] the other pendants that i had shown earlier with eight millimeter bails so i'm just kind of wrapping around and i'm giving it a little bit of space away from the rest of the pendant excuse me because i'm gonna come in holding very securely but not choking it to death like you don't want to be squeezing your pliers so hard that it's marring your wire but you do want it to be stable i'm going to grab this tail of the wire here and bend it around this is a wonderful opportunity to use those bent nose pliers that you can get in where your hand might not normally fit and just tighten that down get everything positioned [Music] then we're going to give that a solid snip i always cover it with my fingers because you don't want to ping that into somebody else's or your own eye or just across the room and then you never find it and then you step on it um okay so we've tucked in that pokey bit and you could leave your bail side by side like this i'm a big fan of splitting them apart just a bit i think it balances on a necklace really well i it's entirely personal preference so there is our wonky little moon hey y'all thanks so much for hanging out with me during this video i really hope that it was helpful to you if you have any questions comments or ideas please leave them down below all the links for the different tools and materials that we use our social media all the different things like that are down in the video description um if you enjoy our work and would like to support the creation of more free tutorials as well as participate in our behind the scenes content digital download stuff uh member exclusive live streams on saturdays please consider joining our craftalong club uh at backtruthcreations.com spirit fingers um it's a we do like monthly craft along kits and all sorts of stuff we also you can sign up for our weekly newsletter that way you can get updates about um whenever we have new items in our shop and notifications about live streams and tutorials and all sorts of different things so be sure to check it out and until next time you guys happy crafting bye

Channel: Yvonne Williams

Views: 33,766

Rating: 4.9510589 out of 5

Keywords: how to, back to earth creations, yvonne williams

Id: pgfvkeLycKA

Length: 46min 47sec (2807 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020