New Jewelry A Day: November 2010

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Make Earrings from Steel Wire

I am not sure why we bought this 19 gauge annealed dark steel wire or with what project we used it. I found it in the junk drawer in the utility room of our basement and I was not sure what gauge the wire was until I measured it was our round wire gauge. Perhaps you have a similar drawer -- a place that collects the remnants of past projects and mysterious spare parts (for things that may have broken long ago and may no longer be in the house).

No matter why we bought it, I was excited when I found the wire. 19 gauge is a perfect gauge to make earrings. The fact that the wire was factory annealed meant we could skip the annealing step when making our earrings and the wire would be easy to form. Moreover, since the steel was already dark meant we would not have to worry about aging the wire or other heat or chemical patinas to add color to our earring design.

These earrings are simple in design, easy and quick to make, but elegant to wear with blue jeans or ball gowns. As always, here is a tutorial on how we made them:

Step 1
Make the ear wire. Make a small loop at the end of the wire. Wrap the round wire around a mandrel. For these earrings we used a green block "borrowed" from the toy box. Cut the wire with flush cutters after you wrapped the wire completely around the block one time. Use a wire rounder or a flex shaft ( or pin vise) and cup burs to file the end of the ear wire smooth. Take care when you file the ends of the wires as sharp wires are not good for ears. :)

Step 2

Make the first component. Make another loop at the end of the wire and wrap the wire around a mandrel. You can use the same mandrel or you can select another size using a marker, pen, pencil, broom handle or ring mandrel. Trim the wire (with flush cutters or other wire side cutters) once you wrapped the wire around your mandrel. Create a second, identical size small loop at the end of the wire. File both wire ends as you did in step 1.

Step 3
Make the second component. Use your mandrel to make a large "S" link. If you do not know how to make an "S" shaped component, see our tutorials listed below. Trim the wire (with flush cutters or other wire side cutters). File both wire ends.

Step 4

Assemble the earring. Open the loop on the bottom of the ear wire with your pliers and attach first the "S" link and then second the hoop. Close the ear wire with your pliers.

Step 5
Repeat to create the matching earring.

Related Tutorials
How to Measure Wire
How to Use a Wire Gauge
How to Make Your Own Hoop Ear Wires (with or without Beads)
Make Your Own "S" Clasp
Make Your Own Beaded "S" Clasp
Make Your Own "S" Chain
Make Your Own Beaded Drop
All about Patina
GeltDesigns Tutorials by Topics

Further Reading
Wired Beautiful
Beautiful Wire Jewelry for Beaders: Creative Wirework Projects for All Levels
The Earring Style Book: Making Designer Earrings, Capturing Celebrity Style, and Getting the Look for Less

Materials
16-gauge
18-gauge
20-gauge
24-gauge

Tools
Round nose pliers or 3-Step wire looping pliers
Chain nose or bent nose pliers
Wire rounder or needle file
Wire side cutters or flush cutters
Mandrel or Wrap n' Tap Pliers
Small ball pein hammer, plastic or rawhide mallet
Wire rounder or wire rounder set with pin vise and 2 cup bursWire Gage

Day 10. Week 2. Jewelry from Found Objects. $ spent: 0
New Jewelry a Day.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Make a Tricolored Riveted Pendant & Chain

So I understand that Clinton Kelly declared wearing matching jewelry on his list of top 100 fashion mistakes in his book Oh No She Didn't: The Top 100 Style Mistakes Women Make and How to Avoid Them.

With apologies to Clinton Kelly, sometimes it is fun to wear coordinating, if not matching, jewelry. Today's pendant was inspired by yesterday's Tricolored Riveted Earrings. I am afraid to say the pendant "matches" for fear of incurring the wrath of the fashion police, but the pendant and earrings certainly work together.

I love rivets and other cold connections. I became fond of cold connections when I began working with glass. Like the earrings, this pendant also uses a rivet to connect the three different colored metal pieces.

Step 1
Select the metals. We again took advantage of scrap metal, as we did with Tricolored Riveted Earrings. We used copper, brass and nickle silver sheet metal for this project.

Step 2
Cut the disks using a disc cutter or jewelry saw. File and sand the disks until the edges are jewelry smooth and all fabrication marks are removed.

Step 3
Dome the top disk. We used a dapping set to dome the copper disk.

Step 4
Drill a hole through the center of each disk.

Step 5
Burn the end of 18-gauge copper wire with a torch until a ball forms at the end of the wire. Pickle the copper wire in a warm acid pickle bath to remove the oxidation formed when burning the end of the wire. Rinse the copper wire with water to remove the acid pickle residue.

Step 6
Rivet the pendant and create the pendant bail. To do so, feed the wire through the drilled holes of all three disks. Bend the wire up against the back of the brass disk. Run the wire along the back of the brass disk. Wind the 18-gauge round copper wire four or five times around a pencil or other mandrel just above the disk. Cut off the copper wire and file the end of the copper wire with a needle file until it is very smooth.

Step 7
Feed the chain through the copper wire bail. We used a handmade "S" brass chain (with an "S" clasp) we made for another project, but you can substitute any chain-- just before to adjust the size bail you make for the chain you use.

Further Reading:
How to Use a Disc Cutter
Make Your Own Discs with a Disc Cutter
How to Use a Jewelry Saw

How to Dome Metal
Make Your Own "S" Chain
How to Smooth Sharp Edges on Copper, Brass and Sterling Wire
How to Make a Sterling Silver & Amethyst Riveted Flower Pin
GeltDesigns Tutorials by Topics

About Cold Connections
Wrap, Stitch, Fold & Rivet: Making Designer Metal Jewelry (Lark Jewelry Books)
Making Connections: A Handbook of Cold Joins for Jewelers and Mixed-Media Artists
Making Metal Jewelry: Projects, Techniques, Inspiration

About Fashion
Oh No She Didn't: The Top 100 Style Mistakes Women Make and How to Avoid Them
Freakin' Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate, and Generally Be Better than Everyone ElseDress Your Best: The Complete Guide to Finding the Style That's Right for Your Body
Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work
Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style (Tim Gunn's Guide to Style)
Nina Garcia's Look Book: What to Wear for Every Occasion
The Style Checklist: The Ultimate Wardrobe Essentials for You

Tools:

Disc Cutter
Files
6"half-Round No"00"cut Swiss file
Needle Files

Torch, Pickle & Bath
Blazer GB2001 Self-Igniting Butane Micro-Torch
SPAREX
Pickle Pot

Day 9. Week 2. Jewelry from Found Objects. $ spent: 0
New Jewelry a Day. Join the adventure.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Make Tricolored Riveted Earrings

Yesterday, we played with our disc cutter when making the Recycled Glass & Sterling Silver Earrings. For that project, we used the disk we made as an accent to enhance the earrings that were made primarily of reclaimed and repurposed glass.

Today, we used the disc cutter again to make riveted earrings from scrap sheet metal.

Step 1
Select the metal. We went through our scrap pile and pulled out small pieces of sheet metal left over from other projects. We found copper, brass and sterling silver sheet metal to use for this project.

Step 2
Cut the metal. We used a disc cutter to cut three sets of disks from the scrap metals. We cut two 1-inch disks from copper, two 7/8-inch from brass and two 3/4-inch from sterling silver.

If you do not know how to cut circles in metal, see our tutorials How to Use a Disc Cutter or our slide show Make Your Own Discs with a Disc Cutter. If you do not have a dis cutter, you can use a jewelry saw and blade to cut the disks. See our tutorial How to Use a Jewelry Saw for instructions.

Step 3
Drill holes in the center of the disks. We used our our flex shaft and a size 60 (.040) drill bit to drill holes in the center of all the disks. We selected as size 60 drill bit since a size 60 drill bit is almost exactly the same size as 20-gauge round wire.

If you are not sure what size drill bit you need for riveting or you are not sure what size is any one of your drill bits, you can use a Drill Gauge for #1 to #60 drill sizes to measure. See our tutorials How to Drill and How to Use a Drill Press for Jewelry Making, if you need help perfecting how to pierce metal when fabricating jewelry.

Step 4
File and sand the edges of the disks until all fabrication marks are gone and thee disks are smooth enough to be worn as jewelry. For instructions on how to file and sand when making jewelry, see our tutorials How to Use a File for Jewelry Making and How to Use Sand Paper.

Step 5
Form the disks. We used a dapping set to dome the disks. See our tutorial How to Dome Metal for instructions.

Step 6

Cut seven inches of copper wire. Burn the end of the 20-gauge copper wire to create a head pin. See our tutorial How to Make a Ball Head Pin for further explanation. Place the formed copper head pin in a warm acid pickle bath (we used SPAREX) to remove oxidation caused by making the head pin. See our tutorial How to Make Pickle for further explanation.

Step 7
Rivet the pieces and form the ear wire. Feed the three copper disks onto the 20-gauge copper wire. We used the large copper disk as the back piece, a brass disk as the middle piece and the sterling silver disk as the front piece. This design gave a three color look but maximized the sterling silver.

Bend the 20-gauge copper wire up against the back of the copper disk. When the wire reaches the top of the disk, bend the wire around a mandrel to create a round ear wire. We used our favorite block as a mandrel, but we have also used a ring mandrel and you can use a kitchen broom, a round chain leg or any other round item that is about the size you need for an earring as a mandrel. Continue to bend the wire around the mandrel and then down parallel to the disks until the wire is just below the disks. The length of the wire will help balance the earrings when worn so they set nicely.

Step 8

File the ends of the ear wires using a wire wire rounder or your flex shaft with a cup burr. See our tutorial How to Smooth Sharp Edges on Copper, Brass and Sterling Wire.

Step 9
Harden the ear wire. Placed the completed ear wire onto a steel bench block and hit the wire with a rawhide mallet to harden the ear wire so it will stay as we shaped it when used and worn. If you do not have a steel bench block, you can use a steel anvil or your work table or bench. You can substitute almost any plastic mallet or hammer for a raw hide hammer, but a steel hammer may mark the wire when you harden the wire.

Step 10
Repeat to create the matching earring.