Spiral wire wrapped stone

I was recently asked by a lovely woman on Flickr about a stone wrapping technique I used in one of my pieces.

This one in fact, so JulieBeth here is how I placed a spiral cage around a bead:

Wild Horse Canyon Picture Jasper pendant necklace

The piece that Juliebeth asked about was that shown above. Here, I wrapped two of the green moss agate beads with a spiral of sterling silver wire, to add some detail to the piece and to reflect the silver used to set the large Wild Horse Canyon Picture Jasper stone.

The technique is pretty simple and you should have a go, as it does make any bead look just gorgeous and a little bit different.

Step 1: Creating the wire wrap cage

In this example I am using an 8mm bead.

Take a 6 inch length of sterling silver wire of about 1.2 mm (which I believe is 16 gauge)

(please ignore my stained work bench – its flux used in soldering)

You then need to make a small loop using a pair of round nose pliers at one end, like this:

This is a starting  loop, which you need to then curl the wire around, to form a flattened spiral – I find that flat nosed pliers work best to keep the spiral flat and the outer most spiral close against the last loop. You should continue curling the spiral until you reach the mid-point of the wire, you should end up with something like this:

Now turn the wire over and repeat the above actions in the opposite direction so that you end up with two opposing spirals:

To create the cage, you need to push the tip of one arm of your round nose pliers through the inner most loop and pull the rest of the spiral downwards:

Repeat this with the other half of your cage until both parts of the cage are expanded:

You now need to use your round nose pliers (or you can use your hand if you are careful) to turn the two spirals over so they are facing one another

You can now take your bead and insert it into the cage.

Step 2: Finishing off the caged bead

In this example I have used a blue sodalite 8mm bead. I took the bead and inserted it carefully inside the cage, pulling the wire spirals out over the bead to encapsulate it:

Step 3: Making the loops that will  be used to attach the bead

To complete the bead you will need to make some loops which can be used to attach jump rings, or other beads, to create your piece. You can do this by cutting a length of wire (I used 1.2 mm, 16 gauge) and inserting it through the hole in the bead, making sure you also go through the smallest loop of your spiral.

Once inserted you can use your round nose pliers to create a rounded loop, the end of which tucks neatly into the inner most spiral to hide it.

And here is my finished, spiral bound bead: