in this video I'm going to show you how to wire wrap using one of the cabochons that we carry in stock this is a brown lip oyster cabochon that we carry and I've done my wire wrapping in copper wire copper wire is always a good idea to use when you're just starting out with wire wrapping because it's a more inexpensive material the only downside to using copper wire is that you may not be able to get some of the effects that you could use with sterling silver for this video we'll be using a violet oyster cabochon item number CB six zero two so let's go over some of the tools that you need for wire wrapping this is a wrap and tap plier and as you see this smaller jar right here has plastic tubing around it so that it doesn't more your wire as you're working with it when you put your wire through the jaw you'll bend the wire around one of these different sized mandrels on this job you can choose to use a hammer to tap the wire into place or you can just use your fingers and gently coax it into a nice round shape this is a pin vise this is what we'll be using to make twists in our square wire you'll need side cutters or wire cutters a Sharpie pen which we do carry this is item number P and three seventy and this will be used to make marks in our blue painters tape as to where we'll put our loops in our wire wrapping nylon jaw pliers to straighten out your wire bent nose pliers so that you can bend your wire closed and take any of the sharp wire ends and tuck it underneath your wrapping so that it doesn't get caught when you're wearing it chain nose pliers round nose pliers and flat nose pliers now as you notice all of these pliers have a coating applied to it and what I'm using is tool magic item number TM one twenty two tool magic is used by dipping the ends of your pliers into the solution and then allowing it to cure for about two to three hours if not overnight what this does is it makes a protective coating on your plier jaws so that as you're doing wire wrapping you will not Mar your wire and I really really do swear by this when I'm using any tools for wire wrapping I may not use my bent nose pliers as much as I use my chain nose or even my flat nose pliers but all of my pliers will get the treatment just in case strips of blue painters tape you probably want to have about 4 to 5 strips just in case and last but not least make sure that you have a ruler so that you can make measurements on your wire and your blue painters tape and now for the wire I have sterling silver soft wire this is different than half hard wire because soft wire can easily be bent into any kind of shape that you wish the spool here on top is sq1 22 and for this project you'll need 3 1 foot increments this wire here on the bottom is half round wire item number sh 0 1 22 and for this project you'll only need one foot the first step in wire wrapping is to take a length of blue painters tape and wrap it around the outside of your cabochon habit so that both ends of the painters tape meet and overlap each other just a tiny bit now with your sharpie marker make a mark where the two ends meet unpeel your painters tape and lay it out right in front of you so that you can make some measurements take your ruler and measure how long the outside of your cabochon is it turns out that my cabochon is about 3 and 3/4 inches long so I'll make a mark on my painters tape now that I've measured how long the diameter of my cabochon is I want to measure on this tape where I'm going to put my wraps my first wrap will have to be right in the center of the bottom of my wire wrapping and then from there I'm going to decide where I want my other two wraps to be this does not have to be symmetrical by any means if you like and if your design will allow you to you can have one wrap up higher than the other or you can have both of them the same or you can have two wraps and one wrap over here this part is completely up to you but for purposes of this video let's just keep it nice and simple and we're going to make ours nice and even how long a length of wire do you need to cut for this project the answer is quick and simple take the length of the diameter of your cabochon like I said mine was 3 and 3/4 inches long and add about 4 to 5 inches on top of that that's all you need for your wire wrapping also at this point in time it's a good idea to make sure that if you have any kinks in your wire you need to address this now use your nylon jaw pliers to straighten out your wire as best as you can so I've measured the middle point of all three of my wires and I've made a mark with my sharpie where that point is take painters tape and wrap the wires on either side of this mark you can set these wires down and cut off a small length of the half round wire make a hook in one end using your chain nose pliers and this length doesn't have to be that long so take the hook and wrap it around like so now you can choose to hold this down with your finger or use pliers but what you'll do is you'll secure that hook and then start wrapping your wire around about three to four times and then I'll show you how to secure it now you have your wire ends that need to be snipped consider this the inside of your wire wrapping while this will be the outside of your wire wrapping at this point take your side cutters and you'll snip off each of these tails hold on to this little amount of wire we'll use this to do our next wire wrapping a little further up here on this bunch of wires now remember whenever you're using wire you must make sure that you have safety glasses whenever I'm working with wire it doesn't matter if it's small wire or large wire or even if I'm bending wire I always have safety glasses on you just never know what's gonna wind up happening with wire you might make a weird cut and something could fly up in your face it's better to have that protection on than not to have it on at all okay so I'm using my flat nose pliers to come in here and flatten the wire and all you have to do is just run the flat nose pliers on either side and press gently all of the wire tails should then flatten against the inside of your square wire and if you check both sides you're good to move on now take out your blue painters tape again that has all of your marks lay your wire down press the wire down and make your next market just like that now as before take your blue painters tape and go along either side of this hash mark there's your mark and then here is our excess wire from our wrap that we did and just like before you're going to make a wrap over on this side and then repeat this same step only on the other side of that middle wrapping that you did for your first wrap now you have all three of your half round wires wrapped around your square wires take your wrap and tap pliers and set the middle wire wrapping right over here onto the large mandrel of the Lord and then hold it fairly tight with your non-dominant hand use your dominant hand and wrap the wires around that large mandrel and you want to move fairly slow at this remove the pliers and then obviously this mandrel is a little small for your cabochon but this is where you get to use your fingers and nudge the wire into that nice round shape with your sharpie marker you're going to make a quick mark on your wires where they overlap take your chain nose pliers hold the wires right at the mark and make a 90-degree Bend repeat this step for the other side of your wires another tip that works is to use a little bit of painters tape to hold your cabochon in place as your wire wrapping now after you've made your 90-degree angle Bend here on your cabochon make another 90-degree angle in your wire again this time your wire tails are heading out from your cabochon take a length of half round wire make a hook in it like you did before and wrap these two halves together so that it tightens the loop up here at the top of your cabochon at this point in time I've already finished doing my wrapping up here at the top and just to allow myself some flexibility when it comes to finishing off my wrapping I'm going to keep the tail of my half round wire attached for the time being it's not in my way so it's not really going to hurt anything the next step that you're going to do is you're going to make bends in your front wire and your back wire for this step you'll need your flat nose pliers and a fingernail use your fingernail to separate this back wire from the other two after you've done that take your flat nose pliers and grip that wire now when it comes to making bends and your wire all you have to do is grab the wire and Bend all I'm doing is I'm twisting so that I'm making a lock back here so that my cabochon can't slip out the main purpose is just to lock your cabochon into place so however you want to make those locks is completely up to you continue doing that up here on the top as well and up on the top on the back and after that I'll show you what to do to make your final artistic design with your wire so now with our remaining wires you have to stop and ask yourself do I want all of my square wires to be the same or do I want to twist some of my square wires hey I want to twist some of my square wires so this is where your pin vise will come in keep in mind that you need to remember where all of your wires are at your front wire will be your bail wire so you don't want to do anything with that right now except for if you want to twist the wire with my middle one I'm simply going to open up my pin vise just enough so that I can slip the wire in and then I'm just going to turn my pin vise until my wire becomes twisted don't twist too much you can't actually break your wire so as you see I have two wires my middle and back wire and I've used my fingers to gently work them into a wave right here now to secure them what I'm going to do is use my bent nose pliers and I'm going to bend them around my back locking wire I've secured my last wire to the back of my cabochon and this is what the front looks like all right so now we have the front done we still have these two wires to work with so what I think I'm going to do so that you can see it from the front is I'm going to do a couple of quick little loops take your round nose pliers and gently work a spiral into this wire and it doesn't have to be extremely tight you have more than enough wire here to do a nice relaxed loop now remember when you're making a spiral you start by making the spiral with your round nose pliers after which you take your flat nose pliers and then help guide the spiral along by gripping the outside of the spiral and twisting inward so last but not least I have this one remaining back wire this one I think I'm going to add a bit more support here to the back I'm going to take my wire gently wrap it around and secure it to this locking wire right here now for these two little guys we're going to make our bail easy as pie take your round nose pliers and you're going to come straight across both of the wires and make a bend just a nice gentle Bend as you see I'm not flattening the wire against the back of the round nose pliers I've come out just a little I'm bending the wire around now if you can see what I've done here is I've taken the tails of these two wires and I've cut them off and what I've done with the wire is I've used my chain nose pliers to make a straight bend in the wires so as you can see it's wrapping and then I bent the wires so that it lays flat against the wrapping back here finally we're going to use this little bit of wire to secure the two tails on the back of this bail and this is as simple as holding the two ends of the wires with your non-dominant hand use your dominant hand and you can use this with your fingers or you can use your chain nose pliers take the wire and you're going to go thread it through just like this pull nice and tight so that you're securing those two tails reposition your hand grab the two tails take the wire and thread it back around so that out it's coming back through to the back like so come in and pull nice and tight snip off the excess wire like so and then I'm going to use my bent nose pliers to come in here and tuck this tail in between these two bail wires there you have it there is your wire wrapped cabochon