Jewelry making is a popular and beloved pastime that has become more than a hobby for many throughout the world: it has become a passion. Making jewelry with wire and beads is a process that takes a long time to truly master, but a wide variety of jewelry can be made without having an expert or advanced skill set.
There is a wide variety of skills that, when mastered, allow you to create the most unique and advanced jewelry imaginable. By learning about these various skills on the internet or through books or magazines, you can push your jewelry making hobby even further.
Some of the more basic skills include cutting jewelry wire, straightening jewelry wire, how to bend jewelry wire, making a variety of loops with your wire, and more. Some of the more advanced skills include: hardening wire to make it permanent, making earrings using ear threads, and making advanced wire spirals.
As you can see, making jewelry has many different skill levels so that you can find your niche and improve upon it.
The right tools will help your jewelry making ventures be successful. You will need flush cutters for cutting wire, round nose pliers for making loops, and chain nose pliers for bending and grasping wire.
Above and beyond those essentials, there are many supplies that can greatly enhance your jewelry creating experience. These tools include: a ruler, a chasing hammer, a cub bur, ben closing pliers, an anvil, step jaw pliers, and nylon jaw pliers.
There are also different jigs available that help to make wire crafting easier. With jigs, you wrap the wire around various pegs to create the different shapes and patterns that you desire.
There are three basic supplies that are needed in order to begin jewelry making: beads, wire and findings. Beads are made from a wide variety of materials and come in a wide range of colors and shapes. There are glass, wood, metal, plastic, stone, semi-precious, precious, and bone beads that you can browse through and choose from.
Jewelry wire is generally either silver-plated, gold-plated, copper, brass, silver, or gold. All wire is sold in a few different sizes that are called gauges. The larger the gauge, the smaller the wire’s diameter. Most jewelry makers use wire ranging between 16 and 22 gauge.
Findings are components including ear wires, clasps, jump rings, head pins, and more. If you are beginning out in the world of jewelry-making, you should have a good supply of head pins, ear wires, clasps, and jump rings. This collection will get you started out, and as you grow as a jewelry maker, you can enhance upon your findings collection.
Jewelry making is a fun and creative hobby that could turn into a money-making enterprise!