Wire Wrap Rings – Tutorial
by Rena Klingenberg – © 2003-Present Rena Klingenberg. All Rights Reserved
This wire wrap rings tutorial is a very fast and easy project. You can quickly make a ton of these from bits of wire left over from other projects, or from a pile of new wire pieces you cut to size.
They’re comfortable and adjustable – and, as you’ll see at the end of this tutorial, there are endless creative ways you can embellish this basic design.
This is another great jewelry-making project for teenagers or pre-teens.
They would especially enjoy fancying these up with some of the variations I list at the end of this tutorial!
And these rings are very cheap to make – using your wire scraps of copper, brass, and colorful aluminum, you can make them quite inexpensively.
If you sell them, I’ve found that $3 to $5 per ring is a price that’s very profitable for me, and my customers feel that it’s a good value for them.
I’ve sold loads of these little wire rings at craft shows and other events where I’ve displayed them in a charming little wooden box.
I originally intended them to be an impulse-purchase item for little girls (which has been a very successful strategy) – but I soon discovered that teens and adults were also drawn to them, especially to wear as pinkie or toe rings.
So if you’re making these to sell, you may want to also make some larger ones to fit adults.
Supplies
Wire Tip:
If you don’t have suitable scrap wire on hand, I found these super-cheap yellow packages of 16- and 18-gauge copper and brass wire in the picture-hanging supplies at Lowe’s (home improvement store).
Or you can find small, affordable rolls of brass wire (such as the little 4-oz. spool shown above) inexpensively at craft / bead stores and jewelry suppliers.
Here’s what you’ll need
to make 1 ring:
- Soft or half-hard round wire, in 16-, 18- or 20-gauge. You’ll need a piece that’s somewhere between 3″ (7.6 cm) and 5″ (12.7 cm) long, depending on how big you’d like to make your ring, and how fancy you plan to get with the two ends of it.For the basic ring I made in this tutorial, I used a 3″ (7.6 cm) piece of 18-gauge copper wire; the finished ring fits up to size 4.5 in the U.S. (U.K. size I, Europe size 7.97).
- Flush cutter / side cutter for cutting your wire.
- Round nose pliers.
- Ring mandrel, dowel, or other item you can wrap the wire around to form it into a ring.
How to Make Wire Wrap Rings
Start out with the piece of wire you’ve cut to somewhere between 3″ (7.6 cm) and 5″ (12.7 cm) long:
Then use your round-nose pliers to turn a small loop at each end of the wire:
The two loops should be facing in opposite directions:
Then wrap your wire piece around your mandrel or dowel. The wire loops you made should overlap slightly, so the finished ring can adjust slightly to a larger size while still completely circling the wearer’s finger:
And that’s all there is to it, for creating the basic wire wrap rings.
You may want to run them through your tumbler if you have one, to harden and polish them up a bit.
Or you may want to move on to doing something fancier with this basic project:
Ideas for Variations
- Instead of shaping your wire ends into simple loops, make them in to big spirals or other geometric shapes.
- Give your wire wrap rings a hammered texture.
- Use twisted square wire instead of round.
- Oxidize or patina the finished ring.
- Use colorful Artistic Wire instead of copper, brass, or silver. Consider twisting two or more colors together.
- Add a bead or two to the design.
- Dangle a tiny charm or stamped tag from one of the ring’s loops.
- Make one of the end loops fairly large, and use a piece of 24-gauge wire to wire-wrap a bead into it.
