Jewelry Making Supplies -- What a Beginner Needs to Know

Jewelry wire is in general brass, copper, silver, gold, silver-plated, gold-plated or gold-filled wire.  This wire is sold in several sizes, called gauges (based upon a standard called the American Wire Gauge in the US), with the larger gauge wire being smaller in diameter.  You can view the different sizes of wire here.  For making jewelry the most common gauges are 16, 18, 20, and 22 gauge.  24 and 26 gauge are used, but less frequently.  For making permanent wire components using one of our WigJig tools, usually 16, 18 or 20 gauge wire will be used, but beginners should avoid 16 gauge because it is harder to work with.  For connecting wire components with the wrapped bead link, frequently 22 gauge wire will be used.  You can view additional information on selecting your jewelry wire here.  You can view information on jewelry wire gauges here.

Beads are decorative items made from a variety of materials that in general have a hole used for holding the bead in position in your jewelry.  Beads can be made of glass, plastic, wood, stone, metal, bone, and semi-precious or precious materials.  You can view additional information on beads here. 

Findings are jewelry making components like clasps, head pins, ear wires, jump rings, and other manufactured or hand made components.  Some examples of findings that are rather important for making jewelry and should be purchased by anyone getting started in making jewelry are:

• Head Pins
• Clasps
• Ear Wires or Posts and Ear Clutches (if required)
• Jump Rings

There are many other categories of findings, but the four identified above are in general more important and necessary for most beginning jewelry making projects.  A beginner would be well served by purchasing some inexpensive head pins, clasps and ear wires to be used for making jewelry.  These items can be easily made with our WigJig tools, but for a beginner you would be better off to purchase some silver-tone or gold-tone findings to use making practice pieces. 

For additional information on jewelry findings visit here.

You can view our WigJig higher resolution video on jewelry making findings by selecting here.  We have also posted a video on the You Tube web site on jewelry making findings that is lower resolution and will download faster.  You can view that You Tube video by selecting here. 

Please select the next topic below or continue with page 1 of our Beginner's Jewelry Making Instructions.