The making of..wire wrapped heart pendants.

Since my last post I have been busy creating new items. And this month I wanted to crack on with the technique of wire wrapping. As silver wire is quite expensive I use plated wire, this is also cost effective when you just start out with this kind of technique as you tend to produce a bit of wastage when you make mistakes.

As it’s Valentine’s Day this month, hearts are obviously playing a part in my new designs and I decided to make two wire wrapped heart pendants – but not just with round wire. Instead I used square wire. I have a  nifty little device from Beadalon with which I can twist the wire into a nice shape. So for the two hearts I made, I used two square wires of different colours (copper, silver plated for the first one and brass and silver plated) and twisted these together. Only downside is that the wire hardens using this method, which means it’s harder to manipulate into a nice shape.

Once twisted I bent it into the desired heart shape. The trickiest bit  here was actually to make sure that the ends were not sharp – so I used a wire rounder and ultimately a needle file to smooth the edges. Using 0.4mm copper wire I started wrapping Swarovski beads and Czech fire polished beads onto the frame. And voila – the finished piece. It is not as easy it as it sounds though and takes a long time to wrap around. Plus you have to be very carefully not to kink the wire, which happens easily – especially if you work with a very long piece of wire. When that happens I tend to straighten it with my nylon coated pliers or if I can’t rescue it I snip it off and use a new piece of wire

Hope you like the results. Until next time.