Colored Wire Jewelry Design Tips

Colored Wire Jewelry Design Tips<br /><br />Color is an important design element when it comes to creating jewelry pieces. It fact, it is probably the most important part of designing a piece of jewelry if you stop to think about it. Color brings attention to a piece and can even provide emotional feelings towards a jewelry piece. For example, muted tones tend to suggest a calm feeling while bright colors can be responsible for creating happy thoughts.<br /><br />For most jewelry designers, when we think of color beads can be one of the first type of jewelry materials to come to mind. They are extremely popular and can bring a pop of color to just about any type of jewelry. However, beads are not alone now when it comes to bringing colorful elements into your jewelry creations. Wire has gotten into the act too, most especially colored wire. Most craft stores and many jewelry supply vendors sell a pretty good selection of colored wire. Beadalon, for example, is one company that manufactures and sells colored wire. This kind of wire is dead soft and comes in a multitude of thickness also called gauges and color palettes, from bright reds and greens to even silver colored so it looks like sterling silver wire.<br /><br />So, where does the color of the wire come from? Though the actual process of how the wire is made various from manufacturer to manufacturer, generally speaking most colored wire starts with a base metal wire such as copper. Then this wire is covered by an enamel coating, which is where the color ends up coming from. The coating is normally fairly tough and will not chip off with standard use and wear; however, it can be damaged if it is scratched with metal tools or tossed in a metal cleaning tumbler or polisher. You can avoid marking the wire with metal tools by either covering the wire with a polishing cloth as you work with the tools, or you can also trying using tools that are not made of metal such as a pair of nylon nosed pliers.<br /><br />Now that you know a little about colored wire, here are some ideas for using it in your jewelry making:<br /><br />1. Use colored wire to create colorful wire findings such as clasps that will match or accent the colors in a finished piece of jewelry.<br /><br />2. Make your own wire beads using colored wire and include them in your bead stringing projects.<br /><br />3. Thin gauge color wire can be combined with seed beads to create fun bead projects such as spiders and butterflies.<br /><br />4. Colored wire can be used to accent lampwork beads.<br /><br />5. Wire wrap beads with colored wire.<br /><br />6. Incorporate colored wire into holiday jewelry designs.<br /><br />Obviously, the only limit is your imagination, but with a little experimentation and just seeing what works and what does not work, you can end up making some amazing and colorful wire jewelry designs.