How to Match Wire To Antique Silver Chain

SKU VID-0987
Designer: Julie Bean
It can be challenging to match wire to antique silver chain. This video helps you decide which wire is best. Also shown in the video is how to make a pair of earrings: pairing wire with antique silver chain and gunmetal findings.
Audio Transcript
Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com oh shet pendant that is hanging from a chain with some rhombus beads so that is going to the project of the video but the real reason I wanted to tape this particular video was to show you how to match a wire color to an antique silver chain so there is that saying that necessity is the mother of all invention and that's really how this came about I was home working on some jewelry and I wanted to use some antique silver chain similar to this and I want to wire wrap a stone to go with it and I could not figure out what wire to use because obviously bright silver just would not look right so I tried some antique brass and that didn't look right and I was really actually quite stumped so I came to work and i hope i have figured it out and i want to show you what i figured out so you've got antique silver chain what yr g match to it well i have three options for you i have vintage art metal and here you can see what that color looks like and that's actually what i've used in the project here so let me lay that against the antique silver chain so you can see is just slightly darker and of course with antique silver chain there's going to be slight variation in it some of the chains gonna be a little darker so i'm going to be a little lighter so it's going to really vary but i think that does work really well so this would be my number one choice but there are two other ones i think work there's also the vintage artisan pewter so here's the art metal one is darker the artisan pewter is lighter and you can see though is still considerably darker from the bright silver that you might use for other projects so i think that too does work very nicely especially if you have a little bit on the lighter side of the antique silver chain and then the third option is stainless steel so it's just a wee bit brighter and shinier than the artisan pewter so those really are I think three very good options if you're trying to match wire to antique silver chain or findings so I hope that information may be clarified something you've been wondering about and solved a problem but now i want to show you how to make this earring because it's fun to make jewelry in video form so i thought i would so we're going to do a bird's nest a messy wire wrap on the cabochons pendant using the art metal 26 gauge wire we're going to combine it with this nice Rolo chain in antique silver we're going to be using some findings to eye pins and an earring hook now these are both gunmetal I think that actually works really well with the wire and also with the chain and then we're going to just have some oops I almost forgot my little swarovski crystal rhombus beads and then in terms of our tools very simple tools you see me use these ones a lot we've got the wire looping pliers and place of round nose but you can use round nose if you'd prefer chain nose and cutters and a ruler let me show you how to do this so we're going to start by measuring off about 24 inches of wire so I've got my ruler here there's 15 now we need another nine and then we're going to start little guard back on this wire does unravel really quickly if you don't put that little guard on we put all these other guys up so I really like a messy wire wrapping with antique silver I just think it lends itself to it but of course you could do a neat wrap too if you wanted so let's go ahead and wrap this guy we're going to take the wire and put it through the hole and then we're going to bend it up we've got about an inch inch-and-a-half here the short tail and we're going to wrap that short tail around the longer one you just want to wrap it right at the top and I'm going to at this point I made one wrap I'm going to grab my wire looping pliers I want to be able to better hold on to this i'm just going to above that first rap we did crimp so it did half the work for me and now i'm just going to wrap this tale a couple more times and the beauty of a messy wire wrap is you don't have to be too concerned with how this looks right now which is very freeing go ahead bend over your long wire rotate your pliers upwards so you're grabbing at the top of your loop and pull your wire so that the wire Criss crosses over the stem and wrap it a couple times and then that short tail you only need it to be wrapped three or four times and then trim it off now we're going to go ahead and wrap over that short tail so I just want it to be trimmed pretty short but I'm not too concerned about the end of it I'm going to wrap this long tail a couple more times and I'm just doing it really loose now I'm going to let go of that talk loop move my pliers out of the way so now I just want to get some bulk going so I just want to make it so it's a little bit more substantial I'm going to do that by just wrapping this wire around and you can even just turn the pendant and you can see I'm really at this point not too concerned with how my wire looks so now as I'm turning it lifts the wire up in places pull it down in other places keep turning you see I'm crossing it over it's going in all directions I'm going to do this for a little bit and then I want to periodically make sure that my loop is up top okay so now that I've gotten some more of a nice foundation going I'm going to take the end of my wire and I can already tell I have actually maybe a little too much wire here so to save myself a little effort i'm just going to trim off a couple inches i'm going to take my tail i'm going to weave it into some of that messy wrapping that already exists and we've already covered that short tail so it no longer is visible is tucked in there so just periodically catch the end of your wire under some of the wrappings and pull it through it almost feels like you're sewing is what it ends up feeling like because it's like you're stitching between different layers and then just wrap and sometimes you can bring it up you can even bring it around the neck of your wrapped wire loop and pull it back down ok and I do want to see what my other one looks like because I want them to look fairly similar in terms of how much I wrap so I could stand do a little bit more wrapping okay no I'm happy with that so I'm going to get rid of my tail so I want to tuck it in so I'm going to weave it in keep weaving it in okay and then I'm going to go up towards the top wrap it and just trim it off now if there's any little point sticking out take your chain nose pliers and press it into your wrappings you go guys tucked in and straighten your loop so now we are ready to build the rest of our earring I do want to show you again this color against the antique silver chain so it does blend really nicely go to make the rest of this earring we are going to cut three quarters of an inch of our chain and then we are going to go ahead and put each of the little rhombuses onto an eye pin and create a simple wire loop afterward so we're making little connector pieces with these rhombuses and where I'm cutting is right where my wires overlap so I'm going to open that loop I'm going to slide on my wrapped wire loop and close it back up then we go ahead and open the other loop I'm opening it just like a jump ring and slide on the last chain link of my cut piece of wire and then close it back up go to the other side open my loop catch on to that end chain link close a backup I'll open the loop at the base of the earring hook and attach it to that simple loop on top of the rhombus and we are done so we built what I think is a pretty pair of earrings and we were able to use anti silver chain the vintage art metal wire and gunmetal findings you can find all the supplies for this project and more at beadaholique.com you

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