Online Class: Don’t Do These 5 Things When Making Jewelry | Michaels

hey beauty friends welcome to the michael's class five things you should never do when making beaded jewelry while we are waiting for our live participants to bop in to our class today please feel free to go ahead and say hey in the comments uh let me know where you're from and i always like to know if this is the first class that you have taken with me for michael's or if you're if you're a seasoned regular you know me from my facebook lives you know me from beatalon you know me from everywhere um but if you don't know me i'm meredith roddy and i work for beetle on an artistic wire and i'm very excited to be presenting this class for michael's today this is one of my absolute favorite topics to talk about when it comes to jewelry making because what we're going to be going over today are the five things you should never do while making beaded jewelry but in there we're going to talk about all of the different things that you should be doing when you're making beaded jewelry this is one of those foundation classes that is great for people who are just starting on their jewelry making journey because i'm going to tell you everything that you shouldn't do but also all of the things that you should do but i think it's also a really good class for seasoned jewelry making people who've been doing this maybe for years um i always find that someone says oh i've been doing that wrong all of this time or oh gosh i never knew that um so hopefully everyone no matter what your skill level no matter where you are in your um in your journey of jewelry making you will find something valuable from this class so oh my goodness we have a lot of beauty friends in here today and the comments are scrolling by very very quickly so if you are watching us live and you have a question or something that i said kind of wasn't quite clear enough um feel free to write that in the comments if things are scrolling by um nice and slowly i will be able to see it and address it in class but if not that is here from beadalon as well she is in the chat room and she will be there to provide links and to answer any questions that you have and of course this class is being recorded so if you um if you have to cut out halfway through or if you are joining us on the replay you can fast forward rewind go back and forth and listen to me until you are sick of hearing my voice but you have learned all of the things so oh this is wonderful so we have some people who are new so welcome thank you so very much for joining me um and also for those of you who have been here for a long time looks like we have some some long-timers here as well welcome now remember when you are watching on different devices your settings could affect how you see me so if you're watching on the replay you'll see my face and then when we go to the camera with my hands you'll see my hands but you might have to go right up to the right hand side where it says view and make sure that that view is is showing me um sometimes on different devices if people have their zoom settings in different ways it affects how you are able to interact and see me so i think that is all of the housekeeping that i have to chit chat about before we get right right into it so uh felicia you can go ahead flip me down to the to the bottom camera and we are going to start talking about the five things that you should never do when making beaded jewelry so the first thing that i always say that's my my 100 top thing that you should never do when making jewelry is when you are going to crimp at the end of your design or at the beginning of the design do not do not do not this is my my biggest do not do not use a chain nose pliers or a flat nose pliers to flatten the crimp okay i have made up here an example of kind of all of the things that you shouldn't do when you are making a beaded design and you can see here see it's always a challenge to see how close i can get and still stay in focus see how that crimp is flattened please please please don't do that so let me show you what what i mean so when you have a piece of jewelry and you are going to finish it you are going to use a crimp tube or a crimp bead and we're going to be talking a little bit more about crimp tubes and crimp beads as we go through our clasp today but when you are using your crimp tube or your crimp bead and you are stringing it on and you are sorry about that guys that's my mom calling me so let me just pop this up real quick and back down again so it's always good when mom wants to make an appearance on the face on the uh the michael's classes um she'll get a kick out of that later on so i'm going to put my clasp on here and of course we're going to come back around and down through our crimp now we do not want to come in here with our flat nose pliers and flatten this down i think sometimes people learn this the wrong way sometimes people just think that this is the the easiest thing to do um but what ends up happening is when you are using the flat nose pliers or the chain nose pliers what you're doing is actually smushing all of those wires against each other and each of these um each beading wire is made up of either 7 19 or 49 teeny tiny little strands of wire and that's what makes beading wire so strong well if you come in here and flatten that down all you are doing is just smushing the wires it is never never never a good idea to do what you want to do is use a crimp tool so here i have my standard crimping tool and for those of you who don't know you can see the different notches on the crimping tool so there's one in the front that is a smooth oval one in the back that has a little lip a little divot that comes down a little point and those are the two the two notches in the crimping pliers and so the proper way to crimp is to make sure that you start in the front of those crimping pliers so often times when we have learned or when people have learned to crimp you start in the back but it's actually you want to start in the front then go to the back and then come to the front again okay so i'm going to squeeze that front plier i'm sorry i'm going to squeeze the plier with the crimp in that front part and what that does is it creates an oval and what that oval does is it makes it easier to have the two wires lay side by side so i talked about how when you use the chain nose pliers it flattens those wires down well in this case you want the wires to be next to each other because if they're crossed in that crimp tube that is also going to put unnecessary and unwanted strain on your wires so when we're making jewelry we want to not only worry about our beautiful design but for jewelry that is going to last and stand the test of time you really want to make sure that you pay attention to the fundamentals of construction so now i'm going to come in here in my back notch and i'm going to gently compress it down and you can see that one wire is on one side of the crescent and one wire is on the second side of the tr the crescent okay so that was the second part so the first part i came in the front second part i went to the back and now i'm going to come back to the front again and i'm going to take that little crescent and it's kind of um it's not kind of it is horizontal right now and i'm going to turn it so it is vertical and i'm going to use that front part of my crimping pliers to bend it down around on itself and now you can see that i am moving that crimp around in the crimping pliers i'm not just doing it once and forgetting about it i'm not um crimping it down as tight as i can um because the way that the um tool is designed you can only crimp it down so far and the last thing that i am not doing please everybody say it with me i will not come in here and smush that crimp in the front of the pliers it is so tempting i i will i'll i'll admit it i'll cop to it when i first started making jewelry i did that also because it's so tempting right you want it to be as secure as possible and get and you know smush that wire up because you think to yourself well if i smush that wire around well then i'm sorry i switched that crimp around i'm going to hold the wire more securely that is not what's going to happen what is actually going to happen is you are going to um to smush the wires and then break the wires because once again i'm going to get to this in you know i think tip three or four these wires are very very thin and the more they are together the stronger they are but we don't we don't want to break them we don't want to put extra strain on them that doesn't want to be there so the crimp tool is designed so that if you follow that one two three step process your crimps should hold tightly every time so the second thing that you should never do when you are making beaded jewelry is to add a clasp without any wiggle room in here so you see this is this is a little much this is probably about two or three millimeters more wiggle room than i usually will allow for but you can see here in this example that i don't have any wiggle room here so what's happening is that beading wire is right as tight as i can get it against that clasp and as tight as i could get it against that crimp tube there you go against that crimp tube and what again what is happening is everything has too much pressure on it and what happens is with wear and tear the friction will end up cutting through that wire and then your jewelry will break and fall apart so you always want to add just that little bit of wiggle room i always make sure that my my clasp has enough room to dangle that's kind of a good rule of thumb if you need more precise measurements a quarter of an inch a centimeter that's usually a good a good amount also and your jewelry will end up i think looking nicer the way to ensure that this wiggle room is always built in is to use a wire guardian and where are my nippers here they are so for those of you who don't know what a wire guardian is it is a little horseshoe shaped piece of metal that is always better when it's in focus there we go it's a little horseshoe shaped piece of metal and it's hollow so what you do with this is you string first you have to string your crimp tube of course let's not forget that see where did my crimp tubes go this is one of those classes where i have so much stuff out on the beading mat that of course i can never find what i need any anybody else feel that whenever you have all this stuff out you can never find what you need so first things first we're going to put on our crimp tube let me see if i can move this down just a little bit so we can really see what's going on here so now we are going to go up one side of the horseshoe and come around and down the second side of that horseshoe okay and so now i want my crimp tube to get all jacked up in there but i do need to not forget to add my clasp so i'm going to grab a clasp i'm just using lobster claw clasps just because i happen to have a whole bunch of them in um in a pile over here but you could be doing this with any kind of clasp a toggle clasp an s hook clasp the same um the same philosophy applies to any clasp that you are using for this um so i tend to use crimp tubes and the only reason for that is because for me i find that they are easier to crimp i think that they look nicer for how i do it but i know people people who work at beetle uneven who swear by crimp tubes they think that they look prettier they find it easier for um to be able to crimp the crimp beads i use crimp beads and crimp tubes interchangeably but when i actually am crimping i will generally use a crimp tube they act the exact same way they are calibrated the exact same way um you use the crimp tube with them or i'm sorry the crimp tool with them the exact same way so i do see a number of questions coming through and it's all information that i'm going to get to as we are going through the all five things all right so the um this is kind of a bonus tip with the wire guardians you want to make sure that you take your chain nose pliers and very gently close let's get a better there we go very gently close the tips together um it's one of those things that uh some people didn't learn when they learned how to use wire guardians but this not only do i think it looks better but when those tips are out they can be a little scratchy um so just gently gently gently bringing those tips together is a really good way to finish off your jewelry and you can see now that wiggle room is built in so i don't have to do any guesswork i don't have to worry about oh is it too close is it too far away and now i have my [Music] clasp with exactly a perfect amount of space in between the crimp tool or inside the crimp tube oh my my words are getting all messed up today and then since i feel like we can't watch this too many times i'm just going to come here and i'm going to crimp down so i'm in that first notch to make an oval see how i'm holding my two pieces of beading wire away from each other then i'm going to come back into the back notch squeeze down ones on one side ones on the other side i'm going to take my horizontal crescent or bean or whatever shape you like to refer to and then put it in between those jaws and again squeeze down and then move my tool around and around and around and around and around okay and what am i what am i not doing if we can refer back to number one i am not coming in here and smushing this in the front of my pliers it is so tempting i know i feel it i feel the temptation but don't do it that way okay so i think that we covered number one which is don't use a chain nose pliers always use a crimp tool number two which is do not add a clasp without leaving wiggle room you always need that little bit of wiggle room and the bonus tip there is using a wire guardian always help always puts that perfect amount of wiggle room it also helps reduce the abrasion of the clasp so you have an extra an extra piece of metal here that is helping with your construction of your jewelry so moving on to number three and this is always the this is the question that we get asked in the beatles office the most this is the most challenging of all of the of all of the pieces of information when you are starting or when you are in the middle of your jewelry making and that is do not guess the size of the crimp beads and the crimp tubes check the label and make sure that you are using the right size for the beading wire that you are using okay so that is a lot of words there's a lot of information that is all tied up in in the number three so let's break it down from the very very beginning this is bead stringing 101 first we have seven strand then we have 19 strand and then we have 49 strand and what this refers to the 49 strand is a really good example that is how many individual wires are all bundled together under this nylon coating so here we have 49 strands all bundled together it's actually seven bundles of seven strands then here we have 19 strands all bundled together and then here we have an old spool so it does not show the seven strands but trust me there are seven strands all bundled together here it's part of the challenges of working from home you gotta you gotta use what you can when you when you're doing that so seven strands 19 strands 49 strands and as i think you can see the more strands that you have the stronger your wire is so diameter to diameter to diameter your wire will be strongest and the most flexible and the most supple in 49 strand it will be the medium amount of those things in 19 strand and it will be the least of those things that will be the stiffest and the least um the least strong in seven strand now second thing to pay attention to on the wire spool is the diameter so here i have a 0.024 diameter i have a 0.018 diameter i pulled out also at michael's you'll find a 0.015 diameter and a 0.012 diameter so the 0.012 diameter is very very fine you can see i'm going to pull this out here and let me move these out of the way so you can really really see the difference pull pull some off i have a tendency to always leave the um always leave the clips on my wire i don't know i think it's something from shows that you don't want the wire to get um to get too unruly so this is the 0-1-2 and then here i have the o24 so let me just bring that up to the camera so you can really see the difference in those two wires so the 012 is very thin and the o24 is much much thicker and this this is important because you always want to to fill your bead holes as much as you can when you are making jewelry okay so file that that little tidbit away because that we're gonna we're gonna talk about that again in a little bit but let's go back to our 7 19 and 49 strand wires and now we're going to get to the choosing of the correct size crimp tube and crimp bead so here on my 015 i think i switched this out it was 0184 but same rules apply we show you right on the spool which size crimp tube to use and which size crimp bead to use now the numbering system is not mine [Laughter] so um they don't line up number two to number two i don't know why i wish i did i wish i had come up with the numbering system because it would be more consistent but i didn't so number one crimp two i'm sorry number one crimp beads yeah i'll do that all the time and number two crimp tube is what you use for this wire if you were using an o24 wire you've got a choice you can use a number two or number three crimp bead or a number two or number three crimp tube now i'll let you know that i usually size down i usually on my 49 strand i'm sorry on my o24 whether it's 49 strand 19 strand whatever if it's an o24 diameter i will generally use a number two crimp tube i think for me it is easier to crimp and it looks nicer um if i was a crimped bead person i would probably size down to the crimp number two crimp bead as well and if i have crimp beads flying around i will use them um but like many things in life we have our preferences right and i am a crimp tube kind of a user and you use the same tool whether you're using the beads or you are using the tubes this is good to know also because when you get the variety packs of crimp tubes which i really like getting because then you get your crimp tubes or your crimp beads in these nice little vials and they're really really good um it's a really good way to keep them from disappearing although mine always seemed to disappear i actually ended up putting them all in a little storage container so i would always be able to find my crimp my crimp beads and crimp tubes and again i use it i use it interchangeably um crimp beads and crimp tubes the the the names of them both so um let's make sure i got all of those things so you want to make sure that you match up the right ones and i'm going to give a really good demonstration on why that's important so say i am using an 01 2 well let's use the 01 5 beading wire so that's something that would be a little bit more common so say i'm using the number one i'm sorry the 015 beading wire and it depends on a lot of different things in your design whether or not you would use the 7 19 or 49 strand wire 19 strand is a really good mid range wire sometimes it comes down to price seven strand is much more economical to buy a school of then 49 strand however at beadalon and especially when you are making professional jewelry to sell or to gift i always recommend 19 or 49 strand because inch per inch the price differential is really um a non-issue um but seven strand is a really good place to start um we uh call it kind of a craft wire an introductory an introduction to the market wire but i almost exclusively use 49 strand or 19 strand in my designs and so here on the spool it recommends either a number one crimp bead or a number two crimp tube so i'm actually going to i want to see i don't think i have any beads in this container but i will show the difference between a crimp bead and a crimp tube um as as we are going along so here i have a number four crimp tube and you can see there is what i am looking for see that's what happens when i move everything out of the way here is the number two and here is the number four so you can see i mean just with your naked eye the difference so this is what is recommended the number two but i'm going to use a number four to really show what happens when you don't measure when you don't align your um your crimp sizes to the size of the wire which is a also a segue into number four which is you always want to make sure that you're using the right crimp tool for your projects so let me first show you what happens when i use this number four crimp tube with just grab another little clasp over here i think it's easier to show when you're actually clasping to a clasp and so i bought a variety pack i have these number four crimp tubes so i'm going to try to use my standard crimping plier to crimp this so i'm going to come in the front and i'm going to smush this down and you can see that it just mashed and mangled that crimp there was nothing nothing good that happened there and so if i come in the back and i try to do the second part i can barely even fit it in there but if i do it's just it just mangles that crimp it just the whole thing is just not gonna work at all the other thing that can happen here and i did a pretty good job of mangling this but let's let's finish finish her off and come in here in the front so not only is this all mangled but if you don't do it well you run the risk of it um it pulling out i had um back when i was first first learning how to make jewelry i didn't know this and so i was using a 0.012 wire with bigger crimps than i should have and i was probably flattening my crimps at that point too because i am a learn by mistake kind of a learner um and so i put my bracelet on and the whole thing just fell apart and so that's how i was able to kind of go through and diagnose and figure out wow i was using the wrong size and the wrong everything so let's talk about now the different sizes of crimp tools so we have and at michael's there is the micro i think it says micro yeah micro crimping pliers right here the standard crimping pliers here and then the mighty crimping pliers and you can see the differences in their jaws pretty well when you're looking at them all side by side so that micro crimper is really small the standard crimper is probably what most people are um are familiar with and then the mighty crimper this guy is actually a workhorse he has a lot of different um a lot of different things that he can do not just crimping but you want to make sure that if you are using something that calls for a number one crimp tube or a size zero or number one crimp bead micro crimping pliers is the one that is going to calibrate the right way if you are using a size number two or three crimp bead size number two or three crimp tube that is going to be the standard crimping pliers and then for that size three crimp tube and size four no size three crimp b size four crimp tubes even i have to think about it for a second the mighty crimping pliers are the ones that you want to use for that and we have charts on all of these things on the beatalon website so um if you go into our learning center and start poking around in all of the different places um that you can poke around in but then thing it becomes once you practice it and once you um do it over and over again it becomes kind of second nature um to know which crimp tool corresponds to which crimp bead or crimp tube okay so um the last tip before i do some supplemental and additional tips is that you don't want to stick with one size of beading wire for all of your designs and i touched on that a little bit when we talked about diameters so let me um line these back up again and kind of go back and talk a little bit more about diameters and what you would use each diameter for so .012 point zero one five point zero one eight and point zero one point zero two four these are the four diameters that are available in michael's i also mentioned if you were paying attention that you always want to make sure that you fill up your bead holes as much as you can because what ends up happening when you are um stringing up your designs is your beads move around a lot actually that's a bad example because that's something another thing not to do your beads are going to move around a lot and if your bead holes are big and if for example on these crystals your bead holes can be really sharp so you want to reduce the amount of friction and the amount of movement as much as you can in order to create a situation that your bead wire and your jewelry is going to be as strong and as long-lasting as possible so that is why you we have so many different diameters so if you have little teeny tiny beads um with little teeny tiny holes of course that 012 is going to be perfect big beads with big holes well of course the 024 wire is going to be the one that you reach for and in all honesty in all honesty unless i'm using beads with very very small holes my go-to beading wire it's not this one it's this one is a 49 strand o24 because this is going to be the strongest beading wire for my designs so you can certainly um over construct your jewelry which is what i tend to do um and a 49 strand 024 wire is going to be great for that so one of the things that i also wanted to mention back on number two when we talk about wiggle room what we were talking about there is creating enough room here at the end of our design that the clasp has enough room to wiggle right however there's another bit of wiggle room which is also really important and if you leave with nothing else please leave with this with this uh information you want to make sure that there is also wiggle room within your design so i have this is kind of my example of all of the things not to do right i i flatten my crimp don't do that i didn't leave wiggle room on the end here don't do that but what i also did is i strung my design up really really tight so one of the things that we as jewelry makers tend to do when we are making jewelry is pick the jewelry up um after we've done the one side tighten everything up so that there's no wire showing at all but what ends up happening is do you see how i can't even get this wire together because um because it's it's just too tight so what ends up happening is not only will these beads all crack if i try to force this together but the wire will end up having so much tension on it that it's going to to snap now this is an extreme example that i like to show because it really drives home the point of what how important it is to think about the construction of your jewelry so i use the exact same cube beads here but instead of doing them all next to each other i put a little seed bead in between each one and what that is going to do is it's going to allow that bracelet the flexibility of closing right because it's a bracelet it needs to go around on your wrist right so this isn't going anywhere and all it's going to do is cut through the wire break the crystals nobody wants that to happen so i'm going to show um a couple more times just that that proper crimping technique again and this time i'm going to grab a bead crimp bead and this is see i'm gonna put it right here no i'm not gonna put it right there the beads also tend to be a little bit rollier let's see if we can get a nice close-up of that bead without it falling off of my finger it'll be easier to see when i get it onto the wire also so i'm going to string my crimp bead onto the wire and i'm going to grab yet another clasp it'll be fun to cut all of these examples apart after class around and back through my crimp bead and i am just using my thumbnail to get that nice and appropriately wiggle room and see notice i did not stay nice and tight just close enough so i have this wiggle room in here and because i'm using a size number one crimp bead i'm using these standard pliers i am going to come in the front and compress it down and this part nothing here is a death grip i'm going to come back into the back jaw of my pliers and round that into that nice crescent half moon shape and then back in to the front of the pliers and some people think that a crimp bead looks nicer and that is fine i oftentimes and before we end class i'm also going to show how to add a crimp cover see lots and lots of bonus material um you know it does look nice maybe i will switch to crimp beads it's funny whenever i do the crimp bead i'm always like oh i really should do that but then i have i look over and all of my cramps are tubes okay so and i don't know if um people notice but i always always is a strong root i mostly always work directly from the school for those of you who have taken many of my classes before you will have seen me do that it it helps me waste less wire and um oftentimes i'm just kind of trying something out and so i can string it up on the wire and then go ahead and and take it off and i haven't wasted any wire and i didn't always do that so i always like to mention that um as part of the class because um it's one of those things that you never sometimes you don't think about okay so now um another really good tip is here on the end i have started slash ended with a small bead so instead of just going straight up with my crystals um next to each other and clearly that's not working for any sort of a design but i now have a size 11 crimp or i'm sorry a size 11 seed bead in between each of these crystals and you can just see already how much different this design is going to lay but i want to make sure that i also end with a small bead so starting and ending your design with a smaller bead whether it's a size 11 c bead a size eight seed bead um a four millimeter round maybe a three millimeter round um whatever it is it's always better to end with a smaller bead it just helps bring the wire together it it helps with maintaining the integrity of the design so let's come and we'll use a crimp bead again on this side and what i was mentioning before is here let me pull my camera up so you can really see one of the tendencies that we that we have especially when we're first designing is to pull our um pull or bring our bracelet or our necklace up and make sure all of this is as tight as possible but what happens if all of this is as tight as possible is it puts way too much tension and pressure on these beads because i have those size 11's in there i'm not going to need to work in nearly as much wiggle room but i always always always always always always this really isn't always make sure that before i crimp my necklace or my bracelet or my whatever i'm making in a round form that's going to be a round piece of jewelry i make sure that i close the second or i close it to the clasp so i'm just going to use a little tag over here on the other side and bring this around and because i'm using o24 wire it's not going to slide neatly through that bead right there i'm okay with that for the purposes of teaching if i was making this into an actual piece of jewelry i might redesign it so that i could slip my excess wire in so instead of making sure that this was all as super tight as it possibly could be with no wire in the middle what i'm going to do before i crimp it is to close the circle to finish the clasp or i'm sorry to to clasp the clasp and then i want to make sure that my little loop here that i've already done that the one on this side matches as close as i can get it and this too is where using a wire guardian comes in really really handy because then you don't have to worry about it being um about eyeballing it you always know that it's going to be the right size so come in here in the very front then back in the very back and then switch it from horizontal to vertical and round that around being careful not to um not to grab that seat glass seed bead because it will snap but and if i were making this for something other than an example i would definitely make sure to pull my wire back through several of the beads beforehand um it does it structurally it really doesn't do anything but what it avoids is having any sort of little um little owie um poking out here or visually um having a little end there i was able to get mine really tight so it's not an issue um but it is something that i do when i make jewelry and so you can see because i put those size 11 seed beads in there and i added in the right amount of wiggle room very different from this one here um the same will hold true for rondelle beads um so not everybody uses the cubes i just like demonstrating it because it really drives the point home but the same thing will happen with um rondelle beads which are much more common so i'm just holding this really um really tight and you can see how doing that same exercise with the rondelle beads really hinders your ability to have a nice drapey piece of jewelry even when you're using 49 strand wire so the last thing that i wanted to show is adding a crimp tube to um to a i'm sorry adding a crimp cover to a crimp tube so um i think yeah so i just wanted to show also since these beads have much bigger holes that you can tuck your ends in here and these are little cube beads so you would also make sure that you would need to um to add in that wiggle room and i'm just going to finish this one off also i think that it's good to show finishing off as many times as you possibly can and i have a little bit of extra time here and the end and so some you wanted to see the blue bracelet flat on the table to see the endings that is the the way that the end of the blue bracelet ended end it up will it stay like that forever i can make no guarantees but for right now that's how that blue bracelet is it actually turned out really really pretty those um pacific blue opal i believe is the color of those of those swarovski crystals all right so i used a number two crimp bead so i'm going to do that again and the thing about beads from michaels which i really like is generally they have larger holes um i've noticed that with the gemstones i'm having so much trouble getting this guy open i've noticed that with the gemstones i've noticed that with um the glass beads um i have always been able can i say always let's say almost always been able to use an 024 wire with my beads that i have purchased from michaels and i like that because i know that i'm going to be able to fill my bead holes as much as possible with my o24 wire um so for that and especially if you are going into michael's it can be really daunting right there is so much there there's so many shiny things that are hitting you from every different angle and so what i what i would recommend for a beginner is to find some beads that you like first right um and then you can generally if you have a strand of beads from michaels this is what i do when i'm in the store so trade secret here right okay so i have a bead and i'm i'm thinking about what i'm gonna do what i'll do is i'll look i'll go like this and i'll look at those holes and so i know just from from years of experience that those are pretty pretty good size holes and so an o24 wire is going to be great for that and then i'll come over here and i'll be like oh these are small beads but they still have a really nice big hole see if i'm going to make sure i have that in in focus um so and that um that is a really good way to kind of start eyeballing and seeing what um what to use for your um for your designs oh my gosh i'm in love with this bracelet i just kind of strung it up and was like meh but now i think this is gonna be one of the ones that i keep okay so i'm gonna come in here one last time and um see how someone had asked the question of um of stringing your beading wire back through that's what i did so i came up here through my crimp tube up and around back through and i'm tightening everything up but not so tight i want to make sure that this has not let lots of nice wiggle room because i didn't add anything in between these beads but i have it closed i don't have any wires showing i am happy so now i'm going to come in here and one last time i'll show the three-step crimping process so i'm going to come in the front jaws of my crimpers to make that nice oval shape i'm going to put that oval shape in the back jaw of my crimpers it's very difficult when you've got all that stuff going on and just a gentle compression and you can feel when it when everything stops so you don't have to no no death grips necessary and then this last part where you come around and just gently close and move your move your tool around and i know i've said it before but i'm going to say it again because everybody wants to do it and i don't i want i want you to come away from this class not doing it do not come up here in the front and smush it again this is done this is perfect okay and depending on the size of your wrist and your your comfort level that will determine what size your bracelet is so i have a pretty small wrist and i always say wrist size is not indicative of person size um so ah and i like to have the um my bracelets fit tighter like this bracelet this little cuff that i'm wearing here and these ones over here i like them to fit tighter but my mom for example likes her bracelets to kind of come down here and be really loose so it depends it really depends on what your preference is what your friend or your customer's preference is seven and a half is kind of the standard length for um for a bracelet but seven and a half is way too big for me which is why i actually tend to make adjustable sliding bracelets and if you go back through on the archives of the michaels community classroom you can find a couple of projects that i did that use that technique of making the adjustable bracelet because then you don't have to worry about it you just know that um that the person can choose their own size it's like choosing your own adventure okay so at michaels you can also find this fun and fabulous um variety pack of crimp covers so there are um it's like a corrugated um finish design a sparkle finish design and spoiler alert those are my favorite um and then two different sizes three millimeter and four millimeter um they've of course gotten a little bit mixed up but a crimp cover is a perfect way to finish off your design and so in talking all about the different things that you should never do and all of the things that you should do the crimp covers are a great way to finish off our discussion so you just kind of have to wiggle this guy in here to get the crimp cover to cover your crimp tube or your crimp bead and there are um these are four millimeter that's generally going to be sufficient for most of your crimping needs and that will fit over a size one size two and size three crimp tube and a zero one and two size crimp bead see how i always have to slow down when i when i'm saying that to make sure i have everything correct so there are two at least two probably more ways of doing this i like using my chain nose pliers to just come in here and very gently squeeze my crimp cover shut so i kind of work it from all ankle angles and it is a a slow movement crimp covers at least in my opinion closing them up and getting those um those edges nice and tight is not a one and done proposition much like crimping you kind of have to go around and judge it a little bit this way just a little bit that way and then finally you are happy with how it worked out and if i had been thinking and i might restring this with a wire guardian on the end just to make it look just that much more finished the other thing that you can do when you are using a crimp cover is to close it with your mighty jaw mighty crimpers okay this one this one sorry this one works too i like to show i'm nothing if not a person who likes to show different ways of doing things because we all learn differently right and we all have different tools and we all have different ways that we like to do things so maybe my favorite way of doing something isn't your favorite way of doing something maybe i love crimp tubes but you swear by crimp beads and you won't use anything else and that's okay um just need to finagle this guy and sometimes your crimp covers are closed a little bit more than you want them to and what you can do is very carefully not to um not to poke yourself is use a beading awl to open that crimp tube up a little bit sometimes it works better than other times but the beading oh all is my tool of choice to open up crimp covers so let's see if if that worked enough and if not i will grab another one let's see we're gonna we're gonna try a different one here instead of fiddling around with trying to get it open and that will happen um it's just kind of the way that they are made and manufactured sometimes you got to open them up let's try sparkle one this time because it's really pretty and i'm clearly i'm restringing this anyway so having non-matching bead or crimp covers isn't going to matter all right look my fiddly fingers we wanted to have a strong finish and i i'm just having a fiddly finish which is you know that's kind of par for the course here let me see if i can jerry break this just a little bit to prove the point and get this on because i really want to show everybody how you should always have to fold it to the of the crib cover i have never heard that i think that it just naturally happens because it's easier to get the crimp in that way but you can see i'm really struggling with this let's try opening this one up a little bit spare with me for one second friends i will make this work and that's sometimes something that happens when you're making jewelry right you're trying to do something and you have something in your mind that you want it to work in a certain way and then for whatever reason it's not working that's why i love watching um different designers different artists different teachers showing different ways of doing things because as i was saying before what might work for one person might not necessarily there we go work best for the other person all right i need to take a deep breath now that i got that on all right so now let's come in with the mighty crimpers and once again just small small movements to get that crimp cover together and rounded so nice small movements and now we have an even more professional finish because on this side i did add that wire guardian so why wire guardian crimp cover lots of nice wiggle room and a perfect perfect bracelet so just to review the five things you should never do while making jewelry that we went over today so the first thing that we talked about was not using your chain nose pliers to use to crimp down your crimps you always always and this isn't always want to use your crimping pliers the second thing we talked about is making sure that there was enough wiggle room in between your clasp and then we also talked about making sure you had enough wiggle room between your beads we also talked about making sure that you don't guess the size of which crimp bead or crimp tube to use because we tell you right on the school we will always let you know so you never have to worry about finding any resource online your spool of beating wire will tell you what you need to know in the same vein you want to make sure that you use the right crimping tool so there are three crimping tools the micro crimper the standard crimper and then the mighty crimper and each of those calibrates with a specific size of crimp beader tube which also calibrates with a specific size of wire and then lastly don't stick with one size of beading wire for all designs you always want to make sure that you choose the largest diameter that will fill up your bead holes as much as possible so in following all of these rules and more because we covered a lot in this class hopefully you'll be able to take your designs from amateur to intermediate to professional and they will last for a lifetime you will have you won't have any frustrations you will only have fun and that's what it's this is all about is creating is um putting together all of this knowledge to make a beautiful piece of jewelry either for yourself or for a gift or to sell there have been so many you see how the sunlight just came streaming through the the window right there oh my gosh the sun just came out so that's a beautiful thing now the class is almost over i can go out and enjoy the beautiful day no back to work with me thank you all very very much everybody for participating there have been wonderful questions in the chat room this class will be posted on the michael's community classroom youtube channel in a day or so um sometimes even earlier and also the beatle on website is a huge resourcebeatalon.com for a huge resource for all of this information we have it broken down in several different ways because i know people learn things in different ways and so perhaps if i explain something one way it doesn't click but if i explain something in another way then it will click for you so uh wednesdays at two o'clock are the beadalon classes on the michaels community classroom we're also starting to offer some classes on saturdays as well so i always learn something from talking to students i always learn something from taking classes so thank you everyone for sticking with me to the bitter end today and until next time happy beading

Channel: Michaels Stores

Views: 118,881

Rating: 4.8218575 out of 5

Keywords: Michaels, Michaels Crafts, Michaels Craft Ideas, DIY Craft Ideas, Arts and Crafts, Jewelry, Beading, Do's and Don'ts

Id: vrC-LehNz10

Length: 62min 34sec (3754 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021