Famous Jewelry Collections: THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Monday, December 17, 2012

THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Posted: 17 Dec 2012 05:55 AM PST

Sure, you can buy clasps but making your own wire clasps is a great way to make any jewelry design as handmade as possible. I've created or mentioned other clasp tutorials before so check out the links below. Here are some more lovely wire clasp tutorials to try.

The gorgeous Garden Gate clasp is by Heather Powers over at the Art Bead Scene blog. This design is suitable for multi-stranded designs. She shared a really good bit of advice which I do follow - practice first with cheaper metals before using precious metals!

I've seen these spiral wire clasps used before. Many artisans come up with different variations of the same idea. Heather Powers' Sun clasp tutorial is a tight hammered spiral which is clearly inspired the name! She also includes a couple of links to other clasp tutorials which will help.

Cindy Wimmer of Sweet Bead Studio has a fun take on this popular design. Her messy spiral coil tutorial looks great no matter what metal is used!

The Shiney Lounge's wire clasp tutorial has a lovely coiled wire detail for the eye part. I rather like the wrapping on the hook side as it means you are only forming one loop. If you try and form two loops together with your round nose pliers, the loops aren't going to be the same size because of the conical shape of the pliers. So it requires a bit of fiddling. I finally bought my bail forming pliers for that reason.

Anne Cecilie Nygård who writes the Jewelry and Polymer Clay Heaven blog has this hook clasp tutorial over at Rena's blog which shows how you can add beads to really customize the design.

Elizabeth over at the Armored Drake has a toggle clasp tutorial which uses a really thick gauge jump ring. The coiling is cleverly done to hide the cut edges of the ring.