Wire wrapping necklace tutorial: Closing the frame

This is a pretty quick tutorial to finish up the frame. What you will need is the same as the last tutorial, except now you'll want to put away the thicker gauge wire and break out the thin gauge wire. Again, the thin gauge should be about 28. Cut your self a generous portion of wire using your best judgement. Don't worry if it's too short, you can always add more later as long as you end it okay. I'll go over ending a wrapping later.

To start off you'll want to pinch together the two ends and make a loop around them with plenty of wire at the bottom and the top. These loops may not end up being used as they are, but they're basically there to start your hard core tighter loops. From there you'll want to pinch the larger gold wire ends together while also holding the silver thin wire in place. The fact that it's looped will help it stay in place. You can use your fingers, or you can use a flat head pliers. The pliers allow you to pull the loops tighter. What I do is I use my hands for the first few loop pulls just to get situated and then switch to the pliers. It's just really difficult on this particular portion of wrapping since everything is moving so much to do hands only.

As you loop around and pull, you'll want to keep the looping round. If you pinch the wire there's a good chance it'll kink, break, or both. Kinking for the smaller wire is similar to having a knot when you're sewing- it holds up the works and looks terrible. Only pull when you're sure the loop isn't going to pinch or kink. Now that I think of it, this is very similar to sewing when it comes down to it.

Once you're to a point where you think you're done with the wrap, you will want to trim the excess off. With binding two larger wires together, you'll have a groove between them where they meet. Try to trim your wire wrapping so that the end is just enough to press the pointy part into the groove. Like with the thicker gauge wire, cutting causes a sharp edge. Sharp edges from the smaller wire can actually catch clothing and pull threads, so its best to try to hide the edges into grooves and parts of the necklace less likely to make contact with anything. You can also decrease the chances of sharp edge catchers by square cutting, micro looping(like we did to the large wire ends only veeery tiny), sanding it, or putting a bit of acrylic or matte medium on the very end. It's a lot of work to do that with every tiny end you'll get though. I wouldn't bother with it for your first try.

And now you're done with your frame. YAY! In the next tutorial I'll be showing you how to get into the meat of the wire wrapping for the main part of the necklace.