Earrings are also well suited to the unique beads that you get in BoTMo.

You'll need to buy the bit that actually goes in your ears - either posts or hooks or interchangeable wire things. You'll need headpins/eyepins/wire for the bits in between. Another fun and useful thing is chain of whatever metal that you're going to use.

I don't know much about tools, so I'll leave that to the others. I mainly use wire cutters, flat nosed pliers and round nosed pliers. Is it hard to get a tax ID number?

I'll speak about tools first.

Others may disagree, but I recommend getting a set of cheap tools first that you can buy at basic craft stores first. They do wear out hands faster (an issue if you are using them more than once a week), and don't feel as nice. But, I've had good luck with them. I only bought my first set of Lindstrom pliers and cutters this winter. But, $20 compared to $150 makes sense to start off with.

I recommend having one pair of wire cutters, one round nose pliers (with small noses. I find use having a small nose and larger nosed pair, but to start off, small nose is nice), and two pairs of needle nosed pliers (without serrations, if possible. Serrated works, but you're more likely to score the wire. Also, smaller tips are better). For all of these, small tips are nice, but you want to make sure the handles are large enough for your hands.

You don't need a tax ID number for Rio Grande anymore to get an account, you just call them and convince them that you are in the jewelry business. Also, check ebay for Linstroms. My jewelry teacher got found cutters for half the price on ebay.

As for supplies, I recommend starting with base metals to practice, then get into silver/gold filled (silver is down a bit right now, but still cheap). I've seen packs with headpins, earring wires, and jump rings for a couple of bucks at Hobby Lobby. Experiment, it's cheap.

Then I'd make an online order. I usually buy findings (the metal bits) online, as they're cheaper that way, and less likely to vary than beads (I prefer to buy stone beads at a store, because they can be variable).

Firemountaingems.com has a pretty good section on techniques and example projects.

Hope that helps.

A useful trick for dealing with serrated pliers, if you are not averse to getting adhesives anywhere near yours, is to put a tiny piece of medical or other cloth tape over the serrations on the jaws. This cushions the pliers and you won't make marks on the metal.

(Personally, I was too lazy to do this, and just tried to learn to hold it at the right tension so as not to leave too many marks.)

Electrical tape didn't work for this trick with my pliers. I mostly just tried to be careful until I got smooth pliers (found a second pair last week, actually).

Electrical tape sux. However, cloth tape (medical tape, the old-fashioned kind) does work. Though if you're clumsy sometimes like me, you might have adhesive near enough to the joint that it gets in there, which is awful.

I'd also say to start with cheap pliers (unless you have hand/wrist issues) and work up to the fancy ones. My most expensive pair of pliers was $13, and they work great. You need to be careful about damaging your hands and wrists, but that's as much about paying attention and taking proper care of yourself as about pliers (unless you're predisposed, like our Lioness). The things to look for, even on cheap tools, is spring action between the handles (either a true spring or a tension bar, preferably on both handles) and symmetry in the handles and pincers. Like affreca said, get ones with smooth jaws and the smallest points you can find. Chain-nose and round-nose are the most versatile, and I like to have a couple of each in case I need to work with both hands.

The best way to learn to work with wire is simply to get some and practice practice practice. Play with it, see how it reacts. Starting with copper or base metal is nice, as it's softer and more forgiving for beginners, but it won't keep its finish over time. Consider the size of bead you tend to use when choosing a gauge of wire, to make sure the wire will go through the holes. Some stones are notorious for small, uneven holes (garnet and pearl leap to mind) and are much more difficult to use with wire.

Feel free to post your efforts and ask for help any time!

Feel free to post your efforts and ask for help any time!

Do! Katie knows a lot more about a wider range of beadworking techniques than I do. She knows her stuff.

OK, I bought some cheap 26 gauge (I had no CLUE what gauge to buy at the time I was in Hobby Lobby) wire. What the heck do I do with it?

I have a friend who made me some linked jewelry, and her links are all so uniform! I've seen things called wire jigs (I think that's right) - should I look into getting one? Is that how you make each loop/link uniform? I was playing with the memory wire last night, and did the loop thingee with each end, and it looked HORRIBLE!

(The memory wire also didn't function the way I was hoping it would, which was disappointing, but I think that's just the way it goes. I had bought the "bracelet" size and had hoped it would conform to the upper arm, but it didn't and looked rather icky, and vigorous arm movement made it slide down to just above the elbow. The stuff really wants to stay as tightly coiled and as close together as possible, whereas I wanted it to spread out and be more visibly spiral-like)

Memory wire is like that. It's picky. It does close coils very nicely, but it doesn't multitask very well. Be sure you don't use your good pliers or cutters on memory wire! It will definitely put nicks and dents in them, which will then transfer to softer wires.

Making the loops uniform is just another practice practice practice thing. You get used to wrapping the loop using the same spot on the round nose pliers. A jig wouldn't help with the loops on links, since you can't put the wire flat into the jig with beads on it. To determine if a jig would work for you (doesn't for me!), I recommend pounding some little nails into a block of wood in the pattern you want to make, and trying it that way before spending the big $$ for a jig.

Memory wire is extremely difficult to work with. It's very stiff, and so it's hard to convince to go the way you want it to. Be careful with it, it will damage your pliers, especially if you try to work the same spot several times. You might want to play some more with the softer stuff before trying to make memory wire do anything other than keep its original shape. The spiral you mentioned is easier to achieve with heavy silver, but it requires quite a bit of work-hardening and finesse.

As for loops, there are a few ways to do it. You can use a jig, but that's often hard to do once you've got beads on the wire. Jigs are great for making wire shapes, but less so for link loops. I generally make mine with round-nose pliers, and making them even is a matter of using the same spot on the pliers every time. That takes practice, so don't get too discouraged if you don't get it right away. 26g is pretty small, and very soft, so you'll need to wrap your loops to make them stay put. Once you've got the wire between the pliers, experiment with moving your wrists and with moving the wire to see where it naturally goes. You can get a feel for how to most easily make loops, though it isn't always immediately obvious. Took me a while of playing around before the light bulb went on.

Personally, if I had 26 gauge wire, I would make wandering wire earrings.

I should post instructions to those, shouldn't I? Or mail them out to BotMo people, or something. (Hmm! one of those posts that's only open to members?)

For the first few years, I only had one pair of pliers, and no cutters at all! I used the one in the pliers. And they were serrated-jaw pliers, too.

*amused look*

Uphill. Both ways. In the snow.



Thought I'd better mention that, just for the record. I believe it's perfectly sensible to use cheap tools if they work well for you, and/or if that's what you can afford right now, and/or if you want to make sure you're really interested in this jewelry-making stuff before you sink serious money into tools.

The breakpoint for me, oddly enough, was not even the hand pain, but when I was doing so much work that my roundnose pliers got out of true. I was going through a pair a year, and Juan pointed out that if I was going to buy them again and again, maybe I should look into the better-made ones that I might only have to buy once. And so it has been. I've had the Lindstrom Rx round-noses for a while now... hmm, at least four or five years, and I used to buy a new round-nose every year, at ten or eleven bucks, which has probably gone up now. So... yep, for my particular situation, even before considering the arthritis and fibro, getting the good tools was a financial win.

If you don't spend most of the day at the workbench, though, you might not want to go that way.

On the other hand, if your tools hurt you to use, you should definitely consider your various options.

I'm thinking of offering a special BotMo supplement for people who'd like to buy tools. It'd be sometime this fall or winter. I could offer them at below beadstore cost, which would be a big big win. (Depending on quantity, I might be able to cut a serious deal, which I could pass on to you guys.) I'm going to go put up a post about that, to see if anyone might be interested later. (And to give people time to save up.)

Basic materials shopping list, for wire-working, to make earrings at a beginner's level:

Some surgical steel earwires
Some white metal headpins (usually in packets of 20 or 50)
Some white metal eyepins (likewise for packet size)
Whatever beads you like
Something to use as spacers* between beads




Fancy additional shopping list:

A packet of 24-gauge (or similar fine or extra-fine) headpins, not too short and not too long (should be an inch and a half to two inches), for practicing wrapped loops through small-hole beads (like pearls and garnets)

Some small-hole beads, like pearls or garnets

A packet of earnuts or earstoppers (those clear or white plastic or rubber tiny cylinders with holes, which slide onto the backs of curved earwires to keep them in your ears)


Money-saving tips:

If silver or gold (or white metal or yellow metal) round spacer beads are too expensive, look in the seed beads section for number 6 sized seed beads in metallics. These often give just as good a look, if you are careful to match sizes, and they're a heck of a lot cheaper.


* Spacers are useful in design. One of the most common things beginners do is string two or three really cool beads together that are all medium or larger, and have no accent beads or "supporting cast" beads to really make them stand out. Try this experiment: Put two good-sized beads, one medium and one large, on a headpin. Look at them. Take them off. Put them back on, but this time, put a flat saucer-shaped bead (metallic if you have one, or black) between them, or a black or metallic seed bead. Now look again. See how it changes the design? The small beads that you hardly see are part of what make your composition memorable. They space things and they frame them, in a way. Use that, and your earrings will be a lot better than most of them out there. (I sometimes use a curve of wire coming down from the top and wrapping the central pole between beads to provide that spacing.)

I have a very few wee beads from your BotM packs...I obviously need more wee beads!! Well, I need more beads, full stop, so that I have a really nice variety (and decent quantities) to work with.

But I'm really just playing now to get the technique down - it's nice that I can crate hideous-looking things and then just take them apart and save the beads.

In that case, then definitely play with whatever scrap wire you can find. Learning to turn loops on tiny bits of wire is a great deal of where my early self-training came from, because I usually couldn't afford the $2.30 for the next packet of eyepins, so I learned to use scraps from previous eyepins, as well as anything else I could get my hands on. (See also the concept of "unsuitable metal," which is now the name of a necklace-crown belonging to matociquala.)

Ummm....the post I just made should have been a reply to this one, but is showing up as a new post.

Weird.

It does that to me sometimes too. The LJ posting gods are whimsical.