Wednesday, March 23, 2011

thing a ma jig tutorial


by Judy Markwell


These instructions list the supplies and tools you'll need and give you some techniques for using a Thing-A-Ma-Jig for the first time. My instructions assume you have read the tutorial from December. If you need some specific information, feel free to go to last month's Charm Bracelet Tutorial.

This is a very simple necklace to get you started using a Thing-A-Ma-Jig. You can buy one right here if you don't already have one. It's a great tool to help you get great results right off the bat.

This necklace looks great with a very high neckline, like a turtle-neck, or something very low-cut and I've included a picture of some matching earrings at the end of the tutorial. You can easily make the earrings following the instructions for the necklace and referring to the picture.

To start off, lets go over the list of tools you'll need for this project.

The tools I recommend are the following:You may not want to bother with the tool magic on this small project, if you don't already have any. Refer to the charm bracelet tutorial if you're interested in what all that "blue stuff" is on the tools in the pictures. Since you're going to be hammering your wire work, this would be a time that it's not important. I highly recommend finding some if you're going to be doing very much wire-work at all.
You may also want to refer to the charm bracelet tutorial for information about cutting wire safely, which side of the wire cutters to use, and other general wire-wrapping information.

Well, now it's time to learn how to use our that Thing-a-Ma-Jig


Start by putting four small pegs in the Thing-a-Ma-Jig as shown here. Leave a tail of wire straight down, and make this shape. It needn't be really tight, but keep it close to the peg.

Now pull the wire across the top of the next peg.

Continue wrapping until you have this shape.

Remove the wire from the jig, and you'll have something like this. The pegs will probably come off your Thing-A-Ma-Jig when you take off the wire you've shaped.

Now cut the excess wire off both ends. This is the location of the cut.

You'll have a shape something like this when you take it off the jig.

Adjust the wire with your fingers or pliers so the loops touch each other as shown here. Basically, you're tightening things so that your finished product looks more like this.

The next step is to hammer the piece on an anvil. If you don't have an anvil, you can use something metal. Sometimes even now I use an old cookie sheet on the sidewalk. This will give your work texture, and it can look really good. You do need to use something metal, not just hammer on something stone. The same is true of the hammer. If you use one with nicks it will make marks.
This is what the piece will look like if you use smooth surfaces.

To make the other piece, put the pegs into the Thing-A-Ma-Jig as shown here.

This is the order to follow for this next wrapping. You'll actually need to NOT put in the last 3 pegs until you need them. They get in the way when you're wrapping the first pegs. Make sure you don't cross the wire over itself anywhere (while you're working, the wire will LAY over itself sometimes, but make sure you don't actually cross over any wires.)

Here's what this piece looks like before you put the last three pegs in. You can see that the wire is on top of itself right after the third peg. You'll straighten these things out later.

This is the piece after you've cut the extra off the wires and tightened the wires as shown for the small piece. Make sure the wires touch as shown.

Here's another picture of the piece after it's been hammered flat. You'll need six pieces, three of each size.

Now we'll make the bead units that go between the wire pieces you made. Start with sliding a bead on the wire. If you want to use a couple of seed beads on each side of the bead, add those now. For the sake of the instructions, consider the seed beads part of the main bead. Leave a little over an inch on each side of the bead, and cut off the excess. Bend the wire as shown here using chain-nosed pliers. Make the same space on each side of the bead for EVERY BEAD you wrap. Go ahead and get all of your beads to this point before going to the next step.

Next you'll make a loop at each end of the bead. If you need more instruction for this, there is detailed information about this in the charm bracelet tutorial. Don't make these loops tiny. You'll be putting the flattened wire through them. Look at the pieces you've made, and make sure your loops are big enough to thread your pieces through.

Here's what the beads should look like with the beginnings of the loops at the end.

As you finish the wire wrapping, only wrap a little bit on each side, working back and forth from side to side. The point is to make both sides of the bead wrapping even.



Use this picture as a reference of how to put your necklace together. Open the wire pieces you've made by twisting the ends to the side, not pulling them apart. This is really important, because the pieces could break if you just pull them apart. If you need pictures of this, go the Charm Bracelet Tutorial.

When you put the large wire pieces on the sides, you'll need to thread the beads through. That's pretty self-explanatory. Simply look at the pieces you've made and the finished product. There's a close-up below.


I also made a dangle that hangs from the center wire piece. I used one of the small wire pieces, and connected it as shown. The bottom bead is connected with the headpin and a few seed beads. You could make this any way you want, but I wouldn't recommend using bead caps unless you found some that were rather primitive looking.

To make this into a necklace, figure out how much chain you want. Do this by first attaching the necklace to the chain on one end without cutting any chain off the package. Put the chain around your neck and play with how long you want the necklace to be.

When you've cut the curb chain to the proper length, attach it to the other side of the necklace. Then find the center of the chain and cut it to attach your clasp. Attach the clasp however it's appropriate for your particular clasp.



Here's the matching earrings that I designed. They look really special, and don't take very long once you've figured out how to use your Thing-A-Ma-Jig.

Well, that's it for this month. We'd love to hear from you. Just click here to let me know if this tutorial was helpful to you, or what you'd like to see here in the future. Also, I'd love to see anything you made using my tutorials.
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wire heart tutorial


by Judy Markwell

These instructions list the supplies and tools you'll need and give you some techniques to help you make your own wire heart earrings. My instructions here assume you have read the tutorial from last month. If you need some specific information, feel free to go to last month's Charm Bracelet Tutorial.

To start off, lets review the tools you'll need for this and most of your wire wrapping projects.


The tools I recommend are the following:The last four items aren't strictly necessary, but they do make the job much easier, and in the case of the tool magic, make things look nicer.
I'll talk some more about the anvil when we get to that part, and some heavy fabric could be substituted for the wire smoothing pliers if need be, again I'll talk about it when we get there.
You may want to refer to last month's tutorial for information about dipping your tools to prevent tool marks, wire cutting safety, what to use the emery board for, and other general wire-wrapping information.
Supplies
  • 20 gauge wire (make sure to have enough for some practice)
  • 2 beads - these are about 4mm, but you could use up to size 10mm beads and the earrings would still look fine
  • one pair of ear wires
Well, now that we've assembled and prepared our tools, and chosen our beads, let's make these earrings.....



First, you'll need to straighten your wire. Get a good hold on the wire (I like to hold the whole spool) with your less dominant hand. Use the heavy fabric (a scrap of denim folded over twice works fine) or smoothing pliers and grasp the wire tightly and pull it out towards the end. The wire will actually get quite hot - this is normal.
Just as an aside, I usually work off the spool, so I have as little waste of my sterling silver wire as possible. Even when I'm not using sterling, I like to keep in the practice of working off the spool whenever possible. If you want to practice this too, make sure after getting the wire straight that you put your bead on the wire before making your first loop. 
Take the end of the wire with your smallest needle-nosed pliers, and make a tiny loop, like this one. This is the first step to making the little bow that goes on the bottom of these earrings.
Now release the loop that you made, and take hold of the wire very close to the first loop, and make a loop in the other direction to make a figure eight design.



This is what you should have -
a tiny little figure eight.







This little section of two pictures shows the finished product of the next couple of steps. Look at your bow as it is now and compare it to these pictures to get a good idea of where you're going next. This is a little tricky to describe, but it isn't all that difficult to actually do.
 









Back to the instructions -

Grasp the side of the bow that you just made using your flat nose pliers, as shown. Make sure youdon't hold the side you made first, the one with the cut. That side will bend if you hold it. Also as you grasp it, make sure the wire end is on the top. This is what it should look like as you grasp it with the pliers, with the wire end in this position.
Wrap the wire towards you and then under the bow until the wire is pointing away from you.






Re-grasp the bow with the flat nose pliers, and wrap the wire a little further, until the end of the wire looks something like this. The hardest part of this bow is getting the wrapping around the bow just enough so it ends in the middle of the back as shown in this picture. This is important so that the bow looks even when it goes through the bead hole.
Again, here's the finished product.







Here's another view of the bow at this stage with the bead close. If we stopped at this point the ends would stick up.


Grasp the bow with the chain-nosed pliers and the flat-nosed pliers. You're going to carefully bend the bow ends down towards the bead. Don't go too far with this, we're just trying to get the ends to not look like they're sticking out. Keep checking your progress by pushing your bead down onto the bow.

Proclaim yourself finished when it looks something like this. You could actually stop at this point, push the bead down and then make a wrapped wire end at the top and have a very nice-looking "head pin". I've used this technique as a head pin for many things.

Now, back to the earrings. Take the end of the chain-nosed pliers, and grasp the wire just above the bead. Make a sharp bend at about this angle. Think of the angle as being one side of the heart you're going to make.

Decide how large you want the heart to be (go up somewhere around ½' from that bend you just made) and grasp the wire with your largest needle-nosed pliers. Make a curve that looks something like this one. After you get that the way you want, you're going to make the bend that will form the "V" of the heart. Look at what you've made, and grasp the wire so that when you bend it up, the V of the heart will be directly over that bottom bend. Bend this side of the heart up so that the angle matches the other one going down.
This is one of those steps that you may need to practice. It looks really easy, but making the two sides of the heart look the same takes a little bit of doing. Grasp the heart in a place that when you curl it around your pliers, it will make an arc that matches the one on the other side. They don't have to match exactly because you want a handmade look, and they aren't going to be worn right beside each other
Wrap the wire around for this look. If you haven't done any wire work before, be sure and look at the last month's bracelet tutorial on this site for more detailed information. Now, this is what the finished bow should look like. You can call this part of the earring finished, or go on to one more step - hammering. Feel free to skip the hammering steps if you'd like.
Place the flat part of the bow on the anvil. If you hit the earring somewhere that the wire is wrapped, it will be very unattractive or maybe even break the earring. Now, carefully and slowly hammer the piece with a smooth surfaced hammer of some kind (you can put duct tape on the end of a regular hammer). At this point, instead of finishing this earring, I'd make the second earring up to this point. It will help you to make both earrings match, and the next steps need to be done for both earrings at the same time.
Now let's make the piece the heart dangles from. Cut two pieces of wire about 3" long. Bend them approximately in the middle with your chain-nosed pliers, so they both look very much like the picture here. They look like hairpins!
Make two bends as shown in BOTH of the "hairpins" you just made. This bend will determine the length of your earrings. Make the bends about an inch from the top of the hairpin. The important thing is for all four bends (two bends on two pieces) to be at the same place. Otherwise the hearts will hang crooked, or the earrings won't match each other.

Now make a loop around your small needle-nosed pliers. This will be what goes around the wire heart. Sorry, the place you're supposed to be looking at is blurred, but I think you can still see what you're doing here. If you haven't done this before, more detailed information can be found in last month's bracelet tutorial.
Clip off the extra wire, making sure that you've left a flat cut. Wire cutters make a sharp end and a flat end. If you don't know what I'm talking about, make a test cut and see the differences. If you have any questions, refer to last month's tutorial (sorry to keep saying that). Do both sides of the earring before moving to the next step.
Twisting the loops open in a sideways fashion (you guessed it, if you don't understand this, refer to last month's tutorial), open these two loops on each "hairpin" and work the wires over the hearts as shown. After you re-close the loops, this is what the earrings should look like now.
If you're hammering your earrings, place this part of the earring on the anvil and hammer them again. Be careful to only hammer the part with a single wire, not any of the wrapped area.


To attach the ear wires, open them by holding the two sides with your chain-nosed pliers and your flat-nosed pliers, and twist the ear wires open sideways, as you did for the wire in the step above. Don't open these ear wires more than you need to, because they tend to break easily. Your earring should look something like this when you're finished. You may need to bend the sides of the "hairpin" a little bit to open them up so they're holding the heart in a way that looks good. When you make the other earring, try to make sure that it matches your first one. That's one of the hardest things about ANY earring design, making the two the same. Another thing to pay attention to, make sure you attach the wires with the hearts the in same direction (the openings on the "hairpins" should be in the back).

Here's the finished product. Aren't they artsy looking? Notice that the hearts don't match exactly, but they look fine when they are being worn. You can use almost any beads on the bottom for all kinds of different looks. There are some great silver-metal beads here on this site that would look great too. You should probably keep the width of the beads to 10mm or under, though.

I'd love to hear from you. Just click here to let me know if this tutorial was helpful to you, or what you'd like to see here in the future. Also, I'd love to see anything you made using my tutorials.
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