I'm one of those people who likes to figure out things on my own. Which means that I have come up with some cool designs, made some bonehead mistakes, learned from my successes and failures and used up miles of copper wire doing what I call "fiddling".
But, there are times when a tutorial is in order and I'm grateful to the people who have shared their skills in books, on blogs and on YouTube. They have saved me hours of time, material and frustration while also teaching me new skills. To those generous folks out there, I say a heartfelt Thank You!
Here are a few of my favorites:
If you're into leaves and want to make wire wrapped leaf jewelry, this tutorial is easy to follow and will result in realistic looking leaves. It's also really fun to see the leaves form!
Wire Birch Leaves
If you're like me and know nothing about macrame, but want to use cord in your designs, this is another super helpful and well written tutorial. It's very easy to follow and the results are beautiful. I used it to make a charm bracelet retirement gift for one of my best friends:
Pom Pom Bracelet
I had long wanted to learn how to make netted wire pendants and this tutorial from beadaholique that shows how to net around a bottle did the trick. Wire netting is another fun technique and once you "get it" will find yourself applying it to all kinds of designs.
Wire Netted Bottle
I'll leave you with a little tutorial I wrote recently about how to make headpins on your kitchen stove (if you have gas or propane - electric doesn't get hot enough. At least, I don't think it does as I didn't try it!
Making Balled Headpins
To see what the other Jewelry Artisan Community blog carnival participants have to say about tutorials, please click on the links below:
Violetmoon's Corner
Cat's Wire
Cool stuff and great post!
ReplyDeleteI really like those wire earrings.
Lovely post, Dawn.
ReplyDeleteI too like the videos from beadaholique, I learned the netting from watching / studying Delia Stones work. :)