 Hi, this is Julie with Beadaholique and today I want to show you how to make custom wire jewelry components. So I've done a necklace here. I'm not going to show you every component in the necklace, but I am going to show you every component in the little earring here and you can then translate it to the necklace and basically be able to tell what we did to make the necklace. There are written instructions on Beadaholique.com for both these projects. This one in the earring section called the Ambrosia earring and this one in the necklace section called the Ambrosia necklace. But for this video, I want to show you how you can easily make some components using wire. You'll need a variety of tools. I've got myself a ruler right here. Important as you're doing this, if you are making earrings or making the sides identical, take notes as you're going as to the length of the wire you're cutting. It'll save you a lot of time later. You're going to need a bench block. I've got a couple hammers here. I have a chasing hammer and a rubber mallet. I have a couple wooden dowels to make these nice curves. If you don't have wooden dowels, you can use markers, pill bottles, anything that's got a nice round shape to it. I've got a diamond file for my rough edges. And then probably the most important tools for this particular project are bail making pliers and these come in a variety of sizes. What's nice about them is unlike a round nose plier where you see it's tapered. You might have a little bit of a smaller loop, a little larger loop. It's a little bit hard to tell. These are the same diameter all the way through. They're going to give you nice even uniform loops. Then you're also going to need a pair of wire cutters as well. Of course, you're going to need wire. You can use all sorts of wire for this particular project. I just use craft wire, which is very inexpensive and it allows you to not worry too much if you make a mistake. You can just throw it out and start on a new little component. But you could use these same techniques on precious metals as well. So like I said, I want to show you how to do the components in this little earring right here. I'm going to start with this bottom loop. What we did to make that was I needed a 3-inch piece of wire and I'm using 20 gauge wire for this particular project. And that bottom loop, I made a note that it was 3 inches long, the wire that I started with. So I'm just laying my wire up against the ruler and I'm just going to snip it at the 3-inch mark. And then what I like to do is I like to make my loops first. For this project, I'm using the smallest bail making pliers and the smallest nose on them. So I'm going to make a loop. Just very easily working my way around. And then I'm going to straighten the wire a little bit with my fingers. If you have some nylon jaw pliers, you can go ahead and straighten it with that as well. Although I am going to be bending this wire in a moment, so I'm not too worried about getting it perfectly straight. And you can see I'm just gripping the wire between the two noses and I'm bending it. So that I almost made a mistake. So if I bent it like this going this way, it would have been against the larger of the two noses and I want to be the smaller one. So to make sure however you're going to bend it that you have the pliers lined up correctly. So I'm just gripping it. And I want to make sure that you see this one's pointing in this direction, it's going up. I want to make sure this one matches. I'm just working my way around and bending it. So I have a little piece that looks like this now. Now I'm going to take a dowel and this is about three quarters of an inch and I'm going to go ahead and just place it against the dowel and I'm holding it in the middle part. And I'm just going to make sure that these are parallel to the table. I'm just going to pull them and bend it around. Just bending it. I see they've met up top. Just pull it off. Now it is a little bit bent up which is fine but you see I've got that nice curve in it. So now I'm going to take my rubber mallet, just flatten it a little bit. Just so it's got the right shape. I want to show you in this particular earring I wanted them bent in a little bit more. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to pinch them because it is wire and it's going to mold to whatever you want. So there I've got that shape now duplicated. And for an added finishing touch I like to hammer it a little bit. So I'm just going to hammer the top and I'm using a chasing hammer. And then I'm going to do the other side as well. And you'll notice that these now pulled away a little bit. So I just need to take my bail making pliers and I'm just going to grab it and twist it back in. I'm going to do that on both sides. There we go. And then I want another little finishing touch. So I'm just going to hammer the base a little bit. So this is work hardening the wire and also adding a really nice touch to it. There we go. So that component is now finished. And you'll see in this earring here that I wire wrapped the sides. That's really easy to do. I've got some 26 gauge wire right here. I'm just going to cut myself a length. I'm not too particular about how much I'm using here. As long as I have enough to make the coils that I want, it's all that really matters. And you'll get a feel for that. So I'm going to hold the wire between my index finger and my thumb and I'm going to press it against the top area where I want to wind around. And I'm going to make a loop. And then I'm going to come back through the hole, make another loop. And again, and squish those together. You want them nice and uniform. There we go. Do as many as you like. And then when you're done, just go ahead, snip off the wire end and make sure that you snip it off in the same direction so that you have a distinct front and back. So I snip that one on this side of my component. So I'm going to make sure I snip this one on the same side. And you'll want to make sure that that little edge lays flat. If you do have a little rough edge, you can always take a diamond file to it. And then you can just put it down just a little bit. Or you can also take a pair of chain nose pliers and just press that into the wire wrapping. So you see, I've got that on that side. I would just go ahead and do that on the other side if I was making this particular pair of earrings and I would make it a little bit longer. And there is a trick if you're going to be doing a lot of coiling, like in this component right here that you see that I did on the necklace, I wouldn't want to have to keep working and coming into the inside of this and around and in and around. What I would do is I would take a piece of wire and this would be the wire that I started with. So we'll pretend that I measured this to three inches. I would make my loops and assuming that I don't need to hammer anywhere where I'm going to be coiling the wire. Because in this case where I hammered above and I hammered below but I didn't hammer where I was coiling the wire, it goes a lot faster if you just take your piece of wire before you actually curve it around the dowel and you just wind it. You scoot it down and you keep winding. And you actually sometimes will get a much neater coil when you do it this way. So there's that and you would just trim it off as normal. And I was going to just make sure that you take care of that rough end if you have one. And then what you can do is then even with the wire wrapped around it you can bend it around the dowel with the wire already on it. Again, this is if we had a bigger piece. And then you can just, if you're not going to need to hammer the wire coil you can just go ahead and make that nice finishing touch there. So that's another way of doing it. Just depends upon your preference and how much you need to do and if that's how you want to do it that way. Remember wire does bend and make it work to your advantage. So that is the first component in this little earring. And now I want to show you how to do this middle component and then actually make the earring hook as well. Now for the second component, the middle one, I know that I need two inches of wire and I'm going to work with my same 20 gauge wire. Again, I'm just going to line it up against the ruler. Make a little snip for this one. I'm not going to do any wire wrapping. So again, I'm just going to make my little loop on each side. Now for this particular project, I am making sure that the loops are facing the same direction. There will be instances where you'll want them to face in the opposite direction, such as when you do this chain link, which I'm going to show you how to do in another video. So I'm going to just flatten that out with my fingers. And in this case, I'm going to take another pair of bail making pliers, this one with a larger bail to it. I'm going to put it in the center. And just I'm eyeballing it and I'm going to bend both sides down at the same time. I'm continuing to eyeball it. See if I need to make any adjustment. It looks like this side might be a little bit longer. I'm just going to bend it a little bit more. There we go. We just made a horseshoe. And at this point, I actually want to hammer this entire piece with my chasing hammer. You can see it's flat. I'm going to just make sure that my loops now are fully closed. And with this one, this component here, you can see that the two sides cross over each other. And I'm just going to do that with my hands. So I'm just going to bend them closer and closer together until they criss-cross. And then I'm just going to pull. So there we go. So we have that now, that middle component. You'll see that we're building our earring. Then this middle part is just on a head pin. And then these are all just connected with gold-colored jump rings. So all that's really left in the making of the components for this piece is the earring hook itself. Again, I'm going to take the 20 gauge wire, lay it down. And I need it to be an inch and a half for this component. So it's laying flat. I'm just going to snip it. And to make my earring hook, again, I'm using the same size of the bail making pliers here. I'm going to make a coil. And this is what we're going to be able to attach our components together with. This is our loop. So I've got that. Now I'm going to make the tiniest little bend. So I'm gripping it right above the loop we just made. Just an ever-so-slight bend. Because you'll see in this one, we went ahead and we did a little wire wrapping up top. So I want an area to be able to do that in. Now then I'm going to, again, use the larger bail making plier. And I'm going to go ahead and just loop it around. All right. So now I'm just going to make the little tip go up a little bit. I'm just going to do that with my pliers. And there we have an earring hook. And then I do want to go ahead and work hard on this as well and flatten it. So taking my chasing hammer. I decided flatten the entire hook. And then what you'll definitely want to make sure you do is take a diamond file because the tip can be rough and just gently sand it down. That's smooth. So now we have all of our components made for our earring and all that would be left is connecting them with jump rings, making this little dangle with a head pin. And then to connect these top two, you would just open this bottom loop the same way you would open a jump ring or any other loop and connect it here to this middle component. So I do want to briefly show you this necklace again. And you'll see if you look closely, this is all just made up of little components which have been made individually and then either connected with jump rings or wire wrapped together. And you'll see it's just that same thing where I've used the bail making pliers to make these little coils. And then I've used different sized dowels to wrap these around. So you have an instance where you have the smaller size on this medium size bail making pliers used for one loop and the larger one used for another. Here we've done three jump rings and then just more components connected with jump rings or wire wrapping and then a handmade chain and a handmade clasp as well. And we'll show you how to do that in another video.