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Spiral Headpins
Making your own headpins is a great way to make your jewelry special. It is also a great way to use up scrap pieces of wire that are 2 or 3 inches long.
This project gives instructions to make headpins with a spiral headpin on the end. The headpin has a V shaped groove in the bottom that can be used to add dangles or link other components.
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Start to Make a Wire Spiral
To make a 2 inch headpin, you will need at least 3 inches of wire. The exact amount will depend on the size of your spiral, so to be safe you may want to start with just over 3 inches of wire and make adjustments once you have made a couple of headpins. I am using 20g red brass wire, but these headpins can also be made with 22g wire.
Grasp the wire at the tip with your chain nose or round nose pliers. My chain nose pliers are very thin at the tip, so they work very well.
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Turn a Loop at the End of the Wire
To start the spiral, you need to turn a simple loop on the end of the wire. You can make the center closed or slightly loose. Experiment with this a little to find the look that you like best.
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Grasp the Loop and Wrap the Wire Tail to Make a Spiral
Using your chain nose pliers, grasp the loop so the wire is just below the jaws of your pliers. Using your other hand, you will push the wire tail so it curves around the loop at the center. Again, you can make this a tight spiral or slightly loose. If you are not familiar with making wire spirals, I highly recommend this video Perfecting the Wire Spiral by Lisa Niven Kelly at the Beaducation website.
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Making a Wire Spiral
Make sure you stop wrapping periodically to assess the size of your wire spiral. At some point, you will be making a small V shape that will make the finished headpin spiral more oval and less round. When it is slighly smaller than you want the finished spiral end to be, stop wrapping.
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Make a Right Angle Under the Spiral
Make an angle under the spiral to change the shape and provide an area to add a dangle if desired. Using your chain nose or round nose pliers, grasp the straight part of the wire slightly underneath the spiral. Bend it at a sharp angle to make a V shaped indentation. You may need to move your pliers to the other side of the angle to keep both sides straight and the angle sharp. When you just bend the wire over the edge of the plier, it tends to be rounded instead of a sharp angle.
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Hammer the Spiral (Optional)
You can use a metal bench block and chasing hammer to flatten the spiral and add some texture. Do not hammer the pin part of the headpin since it will make the wire hard and more brittle - which will make it harder to add a loop to the headpin.
Refer to this article for more information about hammers and hammering surfaces.
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Finished Spiral Headpins
Make several spiral heapins at one time to make sure that some will match - especially if you plan to make earrings.
One of the nicest things about these spiral headpins is that you don't have to worry about making a spiral in the opposite direction. Just flip the headpin over and you will have a mirror image - perfect to make earrings.
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Add Beads and a Loop
I found these cute coral beads carved like tulips in my stash and think that the spiral headpins resemble leaves underneath them for fun earrings. I added a wire wrapped loop above the bead to keep the beads in place and provide a loop to hang them from.
Another option is to hang beads from the V indentation in the spiral headpin.
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Add Earwires to Make Earrings
It is easy to make handmade ear wires to finish these into earrings. Using a very similar technique, you can also make wire spiral post earwires that look great alone or with bead dangles.
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Add Dangles to Spiral Headpins
These earrings have pearl beads on 22g brass wire spiral headpins. At the base of the spiral headpin, I've added hematite dangles attached with wire wrap loops. The dangles are on handmade paddle headpins.