Unexpected Tools For Jewelry Making From Your Kitchen
This is a great place and often the easiest place to start looking for unexpected tools for jewelry making. I imagine that I'll continue adding to this page as I go along but in the meantime, here are some simple ideas to get you started.
This is the bracelet, "Lana", that is a wire and bead making project at Beadifferent Press in the "how to make bracelets" section of that site. Since this bracelet is hollow, I just wanted to gently bend it around something to get the basic shape and then I formed the rest of it in my hands. While I do have a traditional bracelet mandrel (which cost aplenty), it was packed somewhere in the garage of the new home we'd just moved into. Well, a soup can proved to be exactly what I needed size-wise to get the job done.
Kitchen Canister For Shaping Wire Neck Rings
What do you do if you want to make a thicker gauge wire neck ring? It really helps to have a convenient "tool" to help form the basic round shape. In the photo to the left, you can clearly see how using the aluminum kitchen canister works well to help create the neck ring. Here's how you do it: you can start by measuring your own neck with a thin gauge copper wire......work that wire around exactly to where you'd like it to fall on your own neck and then leave a couple of extra inches to make the hook and eye clasp. Measure the length that you've taken.
Next, cut off a length of the wire type and gauge that you've chosen to use. I usually recommend using either 14, 12 or even 10 gauge wires for neck rings so they don't appear flimsy. Hold one end of that wire securely against a kitchen canister like the one here and then carefully wrap the wire around it. While you might find the original rounded neck ring a bit too big or small, you can easily adjust the size in your hands.
Using this method will help you make neck rings that don't have unwanted kinks or bends in them and should give you a nicely rounded neck ring.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chopsticks to the Rescue!
I built the woven wire necklace on the left using chopsticks. It's from my ebook, Make Woven Wire Jewelry, available at www.beadifferent.com and is a fifty page plus downloadable book on round braiding with wire.
Chopsticks are wonderful wire jewelry making "tools" that provide the interesting option of making tapered wire jewelry. There are many things that you can make using chopsticks. What can you think of?
I recommend that you use a good pair of chopsticks that is lacquered to ensure that your wire will slip off of the chopstick easily. Please don't use wooden chopsticks as the wire has a tendency to dig into the wood making it often nearly impossible to get the wire off. If you don't have any other option than using wooden chopsticks, you'll want to sand them and then apply or spray seal them with a clear coat spray. That's some work but should help you be able to use wooden chopsticks (like you get with your Chinese meals) more easily.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chopsticks are wonderful wire jewelry making "tools" that provide the interesting option of making tapered wire jewelry. There are many things that you can make using chopsticks. What can you think of?
I recommend that you use a good pair of chopsticks that is lacquered to ensure that your wire will slip off of the chopstick easily. Please don't use wooden chopsticks as the wire has a tendency to dig into the wood making it often nearly impossible to get the wire off. If you don't have any other option than using wooden chopsticks, you'll want to sand them and then apply or spray seal them with a clear coat spray. That's some work but should help you be able to use wooden chopsticks (like you get with your Chinese meals) more easily.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Great Use For a Kitchen Knife
Kitchen knives are sturdy and often come in handy when making wire jewelry. Take a look at the photo to the left to see how I typically use them. When you're making a wire coil in a heavy gauge wire like the 14 gauge I was using here, it can be a bit tough to get all the loops on the coil identically spaced. If you insert a kitchen knife as I've done, in between the loops, you can get some great assistance in moving those loops.
Simply jiggle the knife gently back and forth, applying more pressure as needed, until you get the spacing that you're looking for. This typically works best when you're got a tight wire coil that you want to have more space in between loops.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Simply jiggle the knife gently back and forth, applying more pressure as needed, until you get the spacing that you're looking for. This typically works best when you're got a tight wire coil that you want to have more space in between loops.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Food That Dissolves
Some of you are well familiar with the now famous "Sugar Cube Bead" that I used to make hollow wire beads from fine silver. There's a YouTube video on how I do it or you can simply go to my Beadifferent website where I have wire jewelry making instructions to download a free pdf for this particular bead. This bead is a variation on one from my book, Make Wire Beads. In the jewelry making instructions for this, you'll see that I essentially coil wire and wind that like a package to get the wire to "catch" on itself and stabilize the bead. Obviously, the success of using the sugar cube to build on led me to consider other kinds of foods to build wire objects on.
Some of you may be old enough to remember "Neccos" candy........round, flat, wafer-like candies from the 50's that were sold in a waxed paper roll. If you want to get creative, all you have to do is stack and glue some of those Neccos together and start making your own forming tool for wire jewelry. Some very interesting possibilities here.
How about vitamins? Did you ever think of them as potential forming tools for wire jewelry making? Start by thinking about a particular shape that you'd like to make for wire jewelry and then go into your kitchen, open your cabinets, go into your pantry and start finding all manner of "foody" unexpected wire jewelry tools!
Some of you may be old enough to remember "Neccos" candy........round, flat, wafer-like candies from the 50's that were sold in a waxed paper roll. If you want to get creative, all you have to do is stack and glue some of those Neccos together and start making your own forming tool for wire jewelry. Some very interesting possibilities here.
How about vitamins? Did you ever think of them as potential forming tools for wire jewelry making? Start by thinking about a particular shape that you'd like to make for wire jewelry and then go into your kitchen, open your cabinets, go into your pantry and start finding all manner of "foody" unexpected wire jewelry tools!