beads and wire, twisted and wrapped wire designs
1 day jewellery making course

A variety of jewellery and hair accessories can be made on the day course, including beaded hair clips/combs, brooches, pendant/earrings and/or buttonholes / bouquets / aliceband. You will be creating your items with beads, wire and plated components.

This class is learning and doing bit of everything and will cover a variety of different designs using the twisting and wrapping technique.

The range of designs we will be working on during the class will accomodate different skill levels, as each design can be made using basic skills, but can be developed further by students with intermediate wire skills and students can choose their own level of work depending on how easy they find the techniques.

Some of the designs are a bit fiddly and twisting wire is quite tiring for fingers/hands. So take a break whenever you need one and browse through the jewellery making magazines and books or work further on creating wrapped designs.

Morning

• Short intro to the tools, beads and components
• Intro to different types, thicknesses and colours of wire
• Intro to making a basic wrapped bead brooch, tips, followed by practise session
• Create a wrapped bead aliceband, comb or hair clip, followed by practise session
• Intro to different types of twisted wire stem designs, tips, followed by practise session
• Intro to creating these practise stems into a; posy, buttonhole or brooch, tips, followed by practise session

Afternoon

• Further designs using the practise stems to make a twisted wire pendant/earrings, tips, followed by practise session
• Combining twisting and wrapping skills; intro to creating a wrapped & twisted wire bead brooch or hair clip, followed by practise session
• Completing unfinished items
• Intro to other type of jewellery courses on offer and course feedback

The day course includes:
demos, examples, some handouts, opportunity for questions and answers, practical work and 1-1 tutor assistance.

note
Materials are available and can be purchased on the course (approx £5 - £10, depending on the beads chosen) or you are welcome to bring any of your own materials with you.

Materials list
If you wish to bring some of your own materials for the course, you will need:
beads, 0.35, 0.4mm, 0.5mm wire and some plated components (hair clasp / comb, aliceband, brooch backs, cones, earring hooks, pendant bail)
optional: 0.8mm wire