Saturday, April 23, 2011

Make Your Own Wire Guards and French Wire



I wanted to show you all an easy way to make your own attractive beading wire protectors that you can do in any type of metal. This picture here is taken with 20 gauge wire as the base wire and 24 gauge wire as the wrapped wire. You can make several wraps of your smaller gauge wire around wire that is at least 20 gauge wire. Use the 20 gauge because you can get your beading wire through the coil when it's done. Use a flat nose pair of pliers to hold the wire in place and use your fingers or another pair of pliers to do the wrapping. I recommend using the second pliers to help you because then you can pull the wraps nice and tight and close. Make the wraps nice and close. Your finished work will look like a tight little spring when you are done. The coil wrapping should be at least 14 mm for your finished piece until you get used to working with it then adjust according to your preference. Trim the excess and slide off the thicker wire. Use just like you would french wire or Accu-Guards. Slide on to your beading wire followed by a crimp and secure the crimp behind the loop you made. See my Dragonfly necklace as an example.