DIY Wire 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. 

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.  

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.

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 unfamiliar with making wire spirals, I highly recommend this video Perfecting the Wire Spiral by Lisa Niven Kelly at the Beaducation website.

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 slightly smaller than you want the finished spiral end to be, stop wrapping.

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. 

Continue wrapping the tail around the top edge of the spiral until it is across from the V shape you made in the last step. 

Using your pliers, grasp the wire directly above the V and bend the wire end straight up.  This will form the pin to add beads to. 

Use your pliers to make any minor adjustments to the headpin. You may want to make the angle sharper, straighten the pin wire or tighten or loosen the spiral. 

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.

Make several spiral headpins 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. 

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.

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 ear wires that look great alone or with bead dangles.

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.