How to Make a Christmas Tree by Wire Wrapping Sea Glass

	Wire Elements, Tarnish Resistant Gold Color Copper Wire, 26 Gauge 34 Yards (31 Meters) SKU: WNT-2633 $10.45
	Earring Findings, Fish Hook Ear Wire 15x15mm, Gold Plated (25 Pairs) SKU: FEA-3020 $7.69
	Sharp Flush Cutter Pliers - For Cutting Beading Wire (1 Piece) SKU: XTL-5600 $23.99
	Xuron Jeweler's Super Fine Pliers Chain Nose Flat Nose SKU: XTL-5450 $25.99
	Beadalon Large Beading Mats - Prevent Bead Rolling 13 X 18 Inch (Set of 2) SKU: XTL-9935 $6.75

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi, this is Julie with beadaholique.com I have a fun festive project to show you today in time for the holidays so I'm going to show you how to wire wrap some sea glass triangles to make them look like Christmas trees I have two examples here. I want to show you how to do both styles of wrapping. One where we have a very neat and one where you have a pretty messy. I'll show you how to finish this earring here. I'll show you this one from start to finish but I wanna show you this example to show you that you could go ahead, you could glue flat backs on here. You could hang beads you could a whole bunch of different things. Let your imagination run wild but I do want to show you the basic technique on how to wrap these trees well they are not trees, they're triangle. They're going to be trees what you're going to need are some see glass triangles. They're traditional held like this because you have a hole at the top. You don't have any type of holes at the bottom. We're gonna figure out a way around that ever and we'll turn them upside down and turn them into trees. For the wrapping, if you're gonna do the neat wrapping I recommend a 24 gauge wire. I have a red artistic wire here for that and then if you're gonna do the messy wrapping I actually recommend 26 gauge wire. That's why I want to show you how to do both For the finishing techniques of this design you'll need an earring hook, a little bead and a head pin In terms of the tools you want to have a ruler, a round nose plier or I have a wire looping pliers I really like these so I'm going to use them. I've got a pair of chain nose and I got a pair of cutters. So I'll show you how to do the neat wrappings first. So for this we'll need 12 inches of 24 gauge wire and we're gonna start by making a wrapped wire loop at the base. To do so I'm going to move about an inch from the base Put the wire in the wire looping pliers, crimp. So that's just made half my loops for me. Wrap it around I've got a complete loop right now and the reason I like the wire looping pliers for this process in particular because it's letting me hold the wire as I'm doing this. It makes it a little bit easier than using round nose all through you could do it with a round nose. I'm going to make some wrappings I don't need a lot just enough to secure it there we go. Now I'm going to trim my short tail and press in any rough edge now I'm going to you call this the front I'm going to go put my wire through the hole I'm going from front to back. Now I wanna leave about an 1/8 of an inch and I want to then push my little wrap wire loop down. So you can see it's going now to hang below my tree. Now I'm going to take my wire to sticking out the back and pull it around to the front and loop it around, leave it around my wrapped wire loop. Again this is just securing that loop even more and all the way back to the front now I'm just going to do nice neat wraps, pressing the wire into the glass triangle as I go. I'm pressing it into place and that's just gonna help to hold it going around and around you can make these wraps as tight as you want or as loose as you want but you wanna make sure that you are wrapping the triangle. You don't want to just say have one or two spirals. That's probably not going to give it enough stability keep going all the way the top. That's what we've got so far so now I need a way to attach my earring hooks. I need to have a loop at the top I'm going to pull my wire up to the top, grab with my wire looping pliers and make another wrapped wire loop now I'm just gonna trim it actually that looks pretty darn good here I've got a loop at the top you got a loop at the base so you can hang something you can hang your earring hook from and something to hang a bead or a charm or whatever you want. One tip is because you are doing a spiral effect going up you don't want to hang anything too heavy from this because you wouldn't want your spiral to pull out of place but if you do something pretty lightweight it is going to stay put if you have a earring hook that doesn't have an open loop at the base and an open loop is something like this here where you can just open and close it, you're going to want to slip it into this loop first which is what I have here. This is a closed loop I slipped it into my loop before I finished my wire wrapping so that's something to keep in mind but a lot of times you'll just have something to that has an open loop you could then just open it and put it on there. If you'll at all concerned that your wire is not strong enough to hold whatever object that you hang from the bottom you could always put a little GS hypo cement on the backside between your wire and the glass and that will give a little extra security too but this is going to be pretty strong and stable as it is so this is how you do one form of wrapping that's neat wrapping I'll show you how to do the messy wrapping. For this you can use 26 gauge wire and you're gonna measure out about 15 inches Start it the same way make that wrapped wire loop at the base clip off the excess. It does not have a sharp edge so I don't have to worry about that and I'm using a thinner gauge wire because I want my wrappings to be really kind of loose and messy and I found when I tried it with a thicker gauge wire it just really didn't hold right. It came away from the side of the triangle too much. I didn't like that look. So again the same way I started before where I just flattened it so it hangs below. This a good refresher if you want to do that neat wrapping this is starting out the exact same way. I'm now just pulling it from the back to the front, going around my loop and now I'm coming back to the front side I think this is pretty fun. What I'm going to do now is I am going to spiral it I'm not gonna be quite as neat about it and I'll maybe even go down below and back up. You can see it's criss-crossed in the back I'm pressing it down as I'm going to flatten it now when I get up to the top on this one see I still have a lot of my wire. I'm gonna now make a wrapped wire loop I'm wrapping but I am NOT going to trim off the tip at this point I'm going to just now continue wrapping some more and again I'm not being too terribly neat about it I do you want it to be messy and then when you get down til you have about an inch and an inch and an half left you can go like that. I'm going to then want to wrap it around. About an inch left. You could see what I just did I there. I wanted a few more wrapping so I just put it on there now just gonna wrap it around my base a couple times trim it off see the star come up a little bit but that's okay because it's anchored on both sides. This thinner gauge wire is not quite as strong and that's why we didn't do it for the neat wrappings where we want that loop to be solid up top but because it's that thinner wire and we made the loop here but we still did more wrappings it does have a little spring to it but it's gonna hold tight. So it came away little I could scoot it down and press it into place more and it will stay more where it needs to and then if you are concerned at all and you're going to hang something heavy again just maybe put a little glue in the backside but actually that's holding fine right now. I do want to show you now how to finish this earring that you see here. I hope you're getting some ideas of what you can do with this technique besides my two examples because there's really a lot of different things that you can do. That you can have fun with You can even glitter these if you wanted to you can see I made a simple wire loop trimming it, opening up that simple wire loop attaching it Now just the earring hook and there we go. I have a pair of kind of modern abstract yet very festive Christmas tree earrings using sea glass and some wire. Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!