Kite Shaped Pendant Necklace | Jewelry 101

Hey, hey, Jewel School. Here's what we're making. We're making a little pendant with this kind of diamond kite-shaped bead in the center. And then we've just got a couple little dangles down at the bottom. Kind of the bulk of the demo is showing you how to make that kite-shaped, make it uniform. That way, if you want to make a pair of earrings, you can duplicate it and it's gonna look the same or roughly the same as the other one. The stones are from, it is a set of five strands, but you get a set of five. The sizes range from four millimeter to 36 millimeter. Then we are using, I've got some of the heavier gauge wire and then we're using 26 gauge wire. I've got some head pins. And then tool-wise, I've got a lot of tools going on. I've got kind of my trifecta, round nose, chain nose, flush cutter. I have got a flat nose plier. I have got a memory wire cutter. I've got a measuring tape and a Sharpie. And then I've got my bench block and my hammers here. So a lot of tools, but we're gonna use every one of them. So let's get going on the demo. The first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna make our kite shape. So my kite shape, I started with, gosh, what did I? Four and a half inches of wire. So I cut a nine inch piece of wire and then I found the middle and then I cut the down the middle so that each one's four and a half. I don't know why I did it on the half because then it just made, then I had to do like three quarters, two quarters. So just make it an even number. That way it's easier to split. So we can go with five inches. So we'll do that. So before I even cut off the spool, I hammer out my heavy gauge wire. This is the 14 gauge. There's 12 gauge and 16 gauge in the big wire set, but I don't believe we have it in stock. Most of you probably already have this at home, which is why I felt okay doing a demo with it. So just get this as flat as you can. The reason you wanna flatten it out first is because when you're going to measure, if you've got any bends in it or anything, your measurements are gonna be inaccurate. So get it as flat as possible. That way you can have real accurate measurements. So then we're gonna line up our measuring tape here. And this is why I'm, you guys know me, normally I don't measure, but if I'm gonna do something like this and be able to make a matching set, then I want to make each piece at the same time, measure at the same time, do my bends at the same time, get it really uniform. That way it, they match. Okay, so then I'm gonna mark my halfway point, which is two and a half. And then I'm going to come up and do another mark. So I've got half an inch on this side and then half an inch on this side. Y'all see those measurements there? So this is gonna be our center point that we're gonna bend here. And then we're going to bring the kite up around the top. So then I'm gonna use my memory wire shears to cut this heavy gauge wire. These are great for a heavy wire that would ruin your flush cutters if you tried to cut with it. So then we are here. Again, I'm gonna go back in and just flatten as much as I can. And this Sharpie most likely will come completely off while we're working with it. But if it doesn't, you can just take a little rubbing alcohol or a little nail polish remover and a Q-tip and you can get the rest of the Sharpie off. But I don't believe on the one I made earlier that there's any Sharpie left. All right, so I'm gonna do my bending with my flat nose plier. It just, it keeps the wire on like the other side of your bend straight. Whereas with a needle nose plier, you can get kind of a divot or like a little bit of a bend since we've got this like little short sections. So when I'm doing this kind of a bend, I wanna use my flat nose pliers. And I'm coming a little bit back off of the middle because of the gauge of this wire. If I was right on my Sharpie mark, my bend is gonna be off center because of the thickness of this wire. So I need to come back a little bit off of my Sharpie mark so that when I do my bend, it's actually in the middle. So we've got that there. Now I'm just gonna bend up into a V shape. And you'll see, if you can see, my Sharpie's right there in the middle and not off to the side. And then we're gonna do the same thing with the other two points. Again, we're gonna grab with our chain nose plier a little back from our Sharpie mark. Hold that nice and tight and then bend in. I don't wanna bend, I don't wanna make a 90 degree angle. I wanna make a little bit wider angle than 90 degrees just because of this kite shape. That's how you do it. So we're gonna come to the other side, do the same thing like that. And then you end up with really uniform links here. These two links are real uniform. And then if you've bent at the same angle, then your side pieces up here are gonna be real uniform too. So this is kind of the tricky part of this for me, especially when you're doing a pair of earrings. So what I did is I held them up next to each other and these are gonna be different. So I'm not going to, if these were the same, I would hold them together and make sure my points are together down there at the bottom like that. And then I'm gonna come in with my Sharpie where I want my kite shape to kind of end. And I'm gonna mark both sides right there. So I know that that's where I wanna start. That's the point where I wanna start making my loop. They may not be perfect. They may not end up exactly the same, but you can kind of fudge it. But as long as you have an idea of where you want your loop to start, then they're gonna end up being pretty close to each other in size. So I will grab my flat nose pliers again and grab one of these sides. One side is gonna go straight up. And that is the, so the one that goes straight up is the one that I'm gonna make my loop from, that one. And then this side is gonna go this way. Bend it back. And then I'm going to come around my loop wire. And then, so we just want it basically to close around that, this piece of wire. I don't need it to be real, I don't want it overlapping or anything like that. So just cut this where it's not gonna overlap. And then just kind of close that loop off. And now we are going to make a loop. Trim this down. And then using our round nose pliers, we are gonna roll down towards our pendant like this. Now this is a little crooked, so I'm gonna go in with my chain nose pliers and just straighten this up a little bit so that it's centered above my piece, like the tip of a Q-tip. Close that up. So we've got our piece here, our kite shape, and then we're gonna do a little chasing on it. So we're gonna grab our bench block and our chasing hammer. So we wanna use the flat side of our chasing hammer. And then we're just gonna give this some really hard taps. And I like to concentrate down at the end of my kite just to give it some size variation. So the one thing you wanna do is make sure you're coming down as straight as you can on your piece. Set that aside. Now, in this one strand, there's some kite shape beads. So there's these onyx ones and this green tone. And then you've got, I don't know what this is, it's got a little bit of a darker green and kind of a tan color in it. I'm gonna go with the black for this one. So we're gonna grab some 26 gauge wire. You don't need a lot of it. Just a little bit, just a couple inches. And then, all right. So we're gonna come through our bead, keeping it in the middle. And then we're just gonna do a couple coils with our 26 gauge wire around our frame. So I like to do, I like to do three. And I like to go up with my coils. I don't know why. I don't know that it matters, but that's what I do. You just need to be symmetrical with it. So then, come to the other side and coil up three times with this. You know what tool I forgot? My one-step looper. Yep, we have them. So for this one, I used the large one-step looper because we've got that thicker bottom edge of our kite down there. And so the loop on a small looper is too small. I think maybe a medium would work, but I'm not positive. Andrew has all of the above. So then, down at the bottom, I just picked up some cool colors to make little dangles down here. I got some bright colors in here and some neutrals, whatever you like. I'm gonna switch. All right, so then we're just gonna line these up on our head pins and then we will loop them and then we'll add them to our necklace. Wow, I ended up with the perfect amount of head pins. That was a total accident. All right, so we're going to loop, loop, just keep going till we get all these done. I try not to squeeze too hard up against these small gemstones because they're a little bit, can be a little bit more fragile than a larger gemstone. And so I don't necessarily close my loop all the way. I will when I add them to my necklace. So we'll go in and open all these up and we'll drop them on our pendant. All right, put it on there. Close your loop, pick out a chain, add our piece to our chain and then we'll be done. And there's tons of different shapes to choose from in this set. So if you want to do something besides these little rice shapes, there's plenty of other little baby beads in this set. You've got heshy beads, you've got rounds, you've got donut shape, you've got cubes. There's all kinds of stuff you can use. So here is our pendant, cube. And then I'm just gonna pick a little chain from here and then I will drop my necklace on. So we'll go in with our chain nose pliers. We will open up our loop here, drop our chain on. Can hang this up next to the other one. All right, mess the other one up. There they are, there's the two. So one a little bit more color, the other one a little bit more of a neutral, but they both still have the fun colors there. So that is it for today's demo. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you make it. I hope you show me what you've made.