A few days ago my mom and I did some craft shopping in preparation for the upcoming Ladies Craft Day at our church. One of the Tuesday Mornings in our city is right beside one of the Jo-Anns. Well, like 3 doors down in the same shopping center, but anyway. And yes, we have multiple Jo-Anns and Tuesday Mornings here, plus a Michael's, an A.C. Moore, and two Hobby Lobby's. Knoxville rocks the craft stores, y'all. Anyway, I always hit Tuesday Morning before Jo-Ann, because they have an awesome craft section, and I just might find what I'm looking for way cheaper.
That day we found 10 mini glue guns with 10 glue sticks each included for $2.99 a piece, which was terrific. And I wasn't even there to shop for myself, but I happened to see this funny looking little thing called The Coiling Gizmo. It was also $2.99, so I grabbed one. This has turned out to be the coolest little tool! And the good news is, even if you can't find one at Tuesday Morning, you can still get one
for under $10. (Not an affiliate link)
They have a couple more incarnations too that are a little fancier, and I've got my eye on the
Professional Deluxe version, maybe for Christmas. (Not an affiliate link)
What this nifty little tool does is make it quick and easy to get professional looking wire coiling that you can use as is or coil further to create various jewelry components.
Here's how it works:
First, you want to choose which rod you're going to coil your wire on. You get two, one thicker, one thinner. I like the smaller one better for most applications because it gives you a more flexible coil. Also, I mounted my bracket on a piece of 2 x 4 for stability, but you can clamp it to the edge of your table with a c-clamp if you have one handy.
Here I'm going to show you how to make a coiled bracelet with a double coiled accent. For the double coiled piece, I used 9 feet of 26 gauge wire, and for the rest of the bracelet I used about 7 feet of 18 gauge wire. The 18 gauge wire comes in many colors in 3 yard coils at Walmart for $1.
First of all, you will take your 26 gauge wire and secure it to the rod by wrapping the end around the curved section of the rod.
Next you want to insert your rod through the proper holes in the bracket. As you can see, the larger rod goes through the top holes, and the smaller rod goes through the bottom holes.
Now, start winding the handle of the rod, whichever way is more comfortable to you, making sure you don't pull loose where you wrapped the end of your wire.
Guide the wire by holding it lightly as in your other hand as you wind. It's best to make sure it's not scraping across the edge of the bracket as you wind, as this may scrape some of the color off some tinted wires.
Keep winding, making sure your wire coil is neat and even. You may occasionally need to stop to push the rod in toward the bracket if your coil is a little loose or spread out. If your wire starts wrapping on top of itself, just reverse a little and recoil.
When you get toward the end of the wire, you will probably have filled the rod up so far that the end comes out of the second hole. At that point, you can either stop wrapping and trim the excess wire from the end, or just finish wrapping it by hand, which is easy enough with this gauge of wire. When the first end is finished, gently pull the beginning end loose from where it was secured to the handle. You can either trim it where the coil starts, or move the whole coil down the wire a little to give you room to wrap this end by hand. Remove the finished coil.
Now, take that finished coil and string it onto your 18 gauge wire.
At this point you will need to know how big you want your bracelet to be. When your 26 gauge coil is coiled the second time, it will be about 2 1/2 inches long if you coiled the entire wire piece and didn't trim it. So you will need to subtract 2 1/2 inches from what you want your finished length to be, then divide that difference by two to see how long your bracelet needs to be on either side of the double coil. This bracelet is meant to just slip over your hand, so it will need to be big enough for that. My bracelet actually ended up a little bigger than I wanted, but it was 9.5 inches, so 9.5 - 2.5 = 7 ÷ 2 = 3.5 inches on either side of the double coil. Of course if you want yours smaller, adjust accordingly. Once you know how long each side section of your bracelet needs to be, secure your 18 gauge wire to the rod and wrap it until it reaches that length.
At that point, you need to slide your 26 gauge coil up to the point where it touches the rod.
Holding it firmly in place on the other end of the 26 gauge coil, continue wrapping, coiling the 26 gauge coil again.
When you have completed this double coil, continue wrapping the 28 gauge wire until the entire length reaches the planned size of the finished bracelet.
You will likely have to take it off the rod before this is done, turn it around and feed it onto the rod backwards, and wrap the rest by hand. This is one reason I want the Professional Deluxe model - longer rods.
When your length is complete, trim your excess wire and make sure the ends of all your coils are safely curved in. Now, grab another piece of wire, preferably 18 gauge of bigger. Mine was 18 gauge and came on a good size coil for $2 from Walmart ages ago. Color doesn't matter too much here as it won't really show. Cut a piece several inches longer than your bracelet and string your bracelet on it.
Now put a closed loop in one end, using either round nose pliers or a one step looper. You can actually put the loop on first and then run the wire through the bracelet if you want.
Feed the other end of your wire (the silver wire here) through the loop you just created and pull it tight.
Now use your one step looper or round nose pliers to create a loop on that end that hooks through the first loop. If you're using pliers, you'll need to trim it to just enough to make the loop first. If you're using the one step looper, it will trim it as it forms the loop.
All done! This project can be done in well under 30 minutes, but it looks like something that took hours!
Here are some simple earrings I made for Taylor using a basic coiled length for each one. Easy!
I already have a jewelry board on Pinterest, but I added one just for Coiling Gizmo ideas if you want to check it out and see some other projects
here.
