Things have been so crazy around here with the holidays coming up that I just can’t seem to get it all together sometimes. I did find time to do a few more videos, but being so scatterbrained lately, I completely forgot to update the blog to let you guys know about them.
Sooooo….
Hope you guys enjoy them. 🙂
As you can probably tell already, I use a lot of crystal points in my jewelry designs. Whether they are drilled or undrilled, they can present a lot of design challenges. That’s one of the things I like most about them. So, when I found a great deal on a lot of tiny undrilled crystal points, well, challenge accepted.
When I said they were tiny, I meant it. These are about 3mm thick and 15-18mm long. At first, trying to wrap these securely without covering up the stone seemed like it would be more trouble that it was worth. But then I had one of those moments where it just clicked. I’ve come up with a couple of ways to wrap them, but this one, with it’s graceful curve that sweeps up the side, is one of my favorites.
So, when facebook reminded me that it’s been 3 years since my last video (oops) so I decided to do a quick one and show you how I wrap these little itty bitty crystals.
I still haven’t quite found a video set up I’m completely happy with, so please bear with me while I experiment. As always, if you have any suggestions for improving my videos, I’d love to hear them 🙂 .
This one is a very quick and simple wrap for crystal points that are very small. The one I’m using in the video is about 3.5mm thick and 18mm long. For a crystal point this size, I used 16 gauge (1.2mm) wire.
For this project, you’ll also need a needle file or a piece of 320 or 400 grit sandpaper (for smoothing wire ends), flush cutters, needle nose pliers, round nose pliers, bail making pliers (in a pinch you can use the widest part of your round nose pliers), a hammer and a bench block.
You can wrap larger crystals in a similar style, however, the larger the crystal point, the thicker the wire you will need.
You can watch the video below, or if you prefer, you can watch it on Youtube.
Normally, when I decide to teach a design, I do my best to strip it down to it’s easiest, most teachable, basic design, while still keeping it visually interesting. Once I have that part down and the tutorial is done, I have to see where else I can go with it. I like to push the limits on it and see how far I can take it. What will it look like on a different shape of focal? How many more curlicues can I add before it starts to look ridiculous? The design I teach in my Woven Crystal Point Wrap tutorial is no exception.
This piece is made with a kite shaped polymer clay faux labradorite cabochon I made, then front drilled in order to add the wirework. I didn’t change the wirework too much from the tutorial, except to adjust it to the shape of the focal. I wanted to keep it simple so that it didn’t compete with the colors in the “stone”.
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For these two, I still kept it somewhat simple. I did add a little more detail to the design on the teardrop, but mostly it was just to take it farther down the stone. For the agate slice, I kept it neat and tidy near the top and added a few beads.
This one is one of the earliest versions of this design. I made it back in 2011. I had this really thin agate point that I wanted to wrap but I wasn’t sure how to do it without making it too bulky looking. I kept the wirework close and tight and used an open style weave. To keep it from looking to plain I added beads tot he frame wire between the wraps for one section of it.
If you’d like to learn how to add beads onto the weave same way I did on this pendant, you can see my Seed Beaded Frame for a Focal Bead tutorial. It uses the same weave as this, with beads added.
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These are two of my favorites. In the right kind of light, these Opalite points seem to almost glow. I don’t like covering that up, so I prefer to keep the wrapping on them close to the top of the pendant. This doesn’t give a whole lot of room for variation, though. So to mix it up a bit on the one on the left, I used the Zig Zag Weave from my Advanced Weaving Techniques tutorial for part of the weaving. For the one on the right I made tiny double spirals and wrapped them onto the frame wires with the weaving wire to give it a filigree effect.
At the time I made this one, I was playing around with different ways to incorporate stamped metal sheet into different designs. I attached it to the pendant by drilling holes into the sheet that line up with the hole in the stone. The wire is then inserted through both the stone and the 2 holes in the metal sheet, then worked as in the tutorial. I only did one woven wrap around the stone and finished both frame wires off in the back to keep the front simple.
I made this one a little more complex. I added a skull bead to the top (both wires fit through the bead) and started the wrap above the skull instead of at the top of the crystal point.
As with most things in life, as much as I say I love to keep things simple, I’m never really happy until I’ve mucked it up and made everything way too complicated. Do you really think jewelry design would be any different for me?
These agate claws have rather large holes in them, so it was easy to put extra wires through it. For this piece I took advantage of that and used the extra wires to make a much wider bail. This made it possible for me to trap a small quartz cabochon against the front of the bail with a woven bezel. The bezel I used is similar to the one I teach in my Odyssey tutorial, except that I used the weaving wire to attach it to the bail in several places as I went along. From there I continued to weave along the length of the stone as in the Woven Crystal Point Wrap tutorial. To make it more interesting, in a couple places I curled the frame wires back over themselves as I wove the wire over them to create curls and spirals.
If you are interested in purchasing faux labradorite polymer clay cabochons, I still have a few available in my supply shop on etsy, WireAndBeadSupplies.
If you would like more information about the first pendant shown above, you can find it at Fairies In The Forest.
