Jewlery Making Ideas: Part III: Learn By Wire Technique

I've been writing lately about jewelry making ideas and started out by writing and breaking down my own method for coming up with wire jewelry designs. If you missed the two previous posts about how to come up with your own designs the posts are here:

http://www.beadifferent.com/blog/one-best-ways-come-wire-jewelry-making-ideas

http://www.beadifferent.com/blog/jewelry-making-ideas-part-ii-beginners

In these posts, as I said, I've delineated my own method for coming up with new jewelry designs that is tried and true, although maybe difficult for any new jewelry designer to do especially in the beginning. So, here are some additional thoughts on how you might begin coming up with your own designs if you're a newbie.

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First of all, it may or may not be tough for you to design jewelery. It may be an absolute natural for you, you may have been doing it since you were a kid or let's say that you've just had a natural inclination to it all your life. Ok, so you already know how to design jewelry. If you're lucky enough to have the money to have the jewelry made for you (assuming you want to manufacture and sell it), you're in the wrong place here. We're talking about wire jewelry making here and wire jewelry designing. The point: you are going to have a hard time designing wire jewelry unless you understand the various wire jewelry making techniques that are in existence.

So, while I previously suggested studying from all the jewelry that's out there and choosing your favorite pieces and then finding out what technique they used, you can start out with techniques just as easily. That's right, find a piece of wire jewelry that you just love and then after familiaring yourself with all possible wire jewelry techniques, buy a book or find a tutorial that you can learn that technique from. If that technique is too hard for you at the time, find another wire jewelry piece that you admire (with a simpler technique) and then learn how to do that one. Learn each technique well and then move on to learning other techniques.

All of that's to say that your ability to design wire jewelry will be greatly enhanced the more wire jewelry techniques you understand and have at your disposal to use. Once you find a form or shape that you want to incorporate into your jewelry, you'll be able to say, "Now how would I make that?" "Oh, yeah, I can use Soumak or an easy S Weave for that curved part", etc.

Now today, wire wrapping has taken the majority of attention for how to make jewelry from wire. But, there are so many other ways of making wire jewelry that offer great potential. Anyway, I guess that's leading me into another post so be sure to watch my next entries.