Have you seen patterned wire before? I have, in numerous ads of sites that flood my inbox everyday tempting me to work with them. Alas, I do not find them in India and its too expensive to import wire. Then one day, as I was getting ready to go to a wedding, I realised that something was pricking my hand. One of the metal bangles that I was wearing had come apart and was pinching my skin. You might wonder how this is possible…I wondered the same – I had never seen or heard of a metal bangle break before!!
I removed it and kept looking at it for a few minutes and that when I realised that it was nothing but a strip of patterned wire, hence was flimsy and prone to breakage. So I did what any decent crafter would do – upcycle it 🙂 I made a pretty pearl ring out of it and here is the process.
Note :You dont need a broken metal bangle to make the ring, just get 1-2mm wide patterned wire strip thats not too flimsy.Check out cool tools for patterned wire!
Materials Required
– Patterned brass wire strip – 1mm, 6-8″ long
(or) Thin metal bangle (2.6 or 2.8 size)
– 1 pearl
– 28g copper wire
– 28g gold wire
– wire cutter
– Nose pliers
How to make the ring:
1) Use an existing ring to learn your ring size on the mandrel.
2) Straighten out the patterned wire, wrap it around the designated size, 2-3 times till the entire wire is used.
3) Cut 12″ of copper wire and wrap together the edges of the patterned wire. When you are half done,Remove from the mandrel, add in the pearl and continue wrapping.
4) Take 8″ of the gold wire and insert it into the pearl and keep wrapping at its base so as ot form a birds nest. (You can use the same wire, I just wanted the two tone effect so I used 2 different wires)
5) tuck the ends into the wire nest. Your Patterned wire aka recycled bangle ring is done
I hope that you find it interesting
Cheers
Leave a Reply