3 Work Tips For Jewelry Beginners

I wish I had these tips when I first started out in jewelry making. While for some people these are simply common sense by now, for those who are just starting out in jewelry making these should help you make your life easier and more comfortable when working with wire or any other kind of jewelry material.

• Work directly from the spool. There are times when this is just not possible, however for the most regular things such as coiling wire, avoid pre-cutting it since you might end up with a smaller piece than you original wanted and have to cut some more. And particularly with wire the less 'lose end' wire sticks you have, the better for the piece and the wearer. Also you might be cutting a bigger piece than you need, so the remaining one will be wasted. Copper might not matter much, but silver and gold is not cheap.

• Use a magnifying lamp, such as the Magnilamp (which is extremely cheap at Amazon). Trust me the difference is amazing particularly when it comes to helping your eyes through the strain of the very small work, and making more beautiful work.

Check out the difference in the wire:

- without a magnifying lamp








- with a magnifier lamp







- with the extra magnifier setting

• Use two monitors. I know this does not apply directly to jewelry making or wire wrapping but trust me when you're many hours at your computer (especially when your craft desk or table also happens to be your pc table, just like in my case), having two monitors makes your life much, much easier. I use one monitor for browsing the internet using various tabs, and the second one for local harddrive, or working from the pdf tutorial - like in my case, I have one monitor open on Eni's older site looking at the various tutorials picture deciding on which one to do, and on the left side monitor I have the actual pdf open, ready to work.

I will post more beginner tips as I get a chance to take some more shots of various things around my craft table. I hope these tips are helpful to newcomers to wire wrapping and jewelry making in general. Comment away if you have other tips or you have other experiences with the above.

Got myself a new camera

Today was a big money spending day. End of the month is my birthday so I told hubby I wanted a new Canon Powershot SX20IS. We bought it today and let me tell you, it is an absolute beauty and truly powerful. My previous camera was a Canon Powershot G5, but this one is like a Mercedes next to a Volkswagen. It was quite expensive as around here the prices are at least twice as much as in the US, but finally I have it in my hands. And I had to try it out right away, of course. Still loads of settings I have to explore, but the macro feature - which is the most important feature in a camera for jewelry photography - is amazing. Did I mention I'm in love with this camera?

The first guinea pig for this camera was a pendant I made the other day - which is for the scrap pile as there are loads of mistakes in it - but was perfect to see how well the macro works (and how visible the mistakes are....).
I added a second tiny pic at the top to see just how small the pendant really is and how well I could zoom it with the Canon. The whole piece with the bail is around 1.2" (~3cm) so it's really tiny in my hands. And now off to the scrap pile it goes...


Also got myself a Magnilamp from Amazon and as luck would have it, it arrived today. I'll work on a second pendant under this magnifier, which also has a small lamp, just perfect to get a good focused light under my work. I know there are many other more expensive ones out there, but for now this will do. My eyes are no longer what they used to be when it comes to wire wrapping and I really need something to see what I'm doing.
Seriously, if you don't have one of these or some other magnifier which also has a lamp, you don't know how much you could improve your work by truly seeing every single detail of your wrapping. I'm working on a new version of the same pendant but now I clearly see the wire and where it goes over the base and I can see the difference.

Gorgeous free wire wrapping earrings tutorial

Even though it's an older tutorial, I only saw this today and I couldn't believe it's FREE! It's absolutely gorgeous and my fingers are simply itching to try it out.

If you want to check it out, it's a very long jpg picture that you can enlarge onscreen. Click here to visit Aniolek's Deviant art page where the tutorial is waiting for more visitors!