All about jewellery making

In my last post I talked about the beaded snowflakes design in Dorothy Wood’s book ‘Simply Sparkling Christmas Beading’.  My challenge was to find a way to create the wire frame for making beaded snowflakes using cold connections.  Here is a tutorial for my beaded snowflake wirework frame which I have tested out with the following result:

To create the basic beaded snowflake wirework frame you need to cut three identical pieces of wire (I used 0.8 mm).  The length is up to you as it will determine the final size of your beaded snowflake.  Line up the wires next to each other and using a finer length of of wire (i used 0.6 mm) create a wirewrap around the wires at the midway point - see fig. 1.

fig. 1

You are almost done already!  Once the wirewrap is secure you can then fold the arms out like so:

fig. 2

You are now ready to apply your chosen beads to each of the snowflake arms.  Secure the beads by using your round nose pliers to create a small loop at the end of each wire - see fig. 3.

fig. 3

photo of my beaded snowflake at this stage

Don’t worry if your beaded snowflake is a little wobbly. You are about to add the embellishments with fine wire and this will hold it all together.  For my beaded snowflake I created bead picks as explained in Dorothy’s book (pp. 14 - 17) but you could use more crystals, beads, seed beads, ribbons, buttons to suit your own tastes.  I can’t explain here how to create the bead picks because I wish to respect Dorothy’s copyright.  If you want to replicate these delicate beaded fronds please see her book.  However all other forms of decoration can be attached using fine wire (0.2 or 0.3 mm) by twisting and weaving around the centre of the beaded snowflake.  I found it useful to incorporate some beaded loops at the centre as these hide the wire you have used to bind the decoration.  Add a hanging loop by attaching a thread on any one of the loops at the end of the beaded snowflake’s arms. 

fig. 4

If you have a go at creating a beaded snowflake using my wirework frame tutorial do feel free to send me a picture and I will add it to this post.  It would be nice to have a whole page of Christmassy beaded snowflakes!

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