~ by Eressëa

Materials:

– Wire (normal grey-coloured will do, but if you want a more fancy-looking ring you can use copper, silver, or gold-coloured wire)

– Beads of different shape, size and flashiness (of the colours or colour that you prefer)

Procedure:

Making the Ring:

To make a ring, first you need to decide on your choice of colours … if you want the ring to be in white colours, you need to use beads in that colour. When having decided upon that, cut a piece of wire – the piece should at least be of some length, but if you plan to make a wide ring you’ll need to cut an even bigger piece.

You then decide upon the pattern you wish to have your beads in, for example, small-small-long-round-long-small-small, and then you start stringing them on your wire in that pattern. A good idea is to blend different kinds of beads but have some basic beads you put in in between. When finished with stringing the beads on the wire, you can either wind the ends together by making a hook of one of the ends and a loop of the other (of course making sure that the ring fits your finger – or perhaps a bit wider than your finger if you want to give the ring some sort of adornment).

If you want to have a broader ring you have to make a sufficiently long beadstring. You cut this into two or three pieces, depending on the way you wish to wind the strings together. You may then follow one of the following two procedures:

1) Twisting (or winding) … to do this you can use two or more beadstrings, you take the strings by one of their ends and then twist them into a “beadcord” – or a broader beadstring.

2) Plaiting (or weaving) … you need three beadstrings (or six if you know how to plait with that many strings) and then you simply weave the strings together.

Of course should you want an even wider ring you can easily make three plaited strings and then weave or twist them together as well, you will of course not need three plaited strings to twist them together. When you’re satisfied with your ring’s width you wind the ends together following the procedure explained above (making a hook and a loop).

Making the Adornment:

You may wish to give your ring some adornment to make it look more decorative and fancy. You can do that either by fastening some large gemlooking bead to it with wire, or by making a flower or something alike with beadstrings.
To do the latter you’ll of course need more beads and wire and then you basically follow the same stringing procedure as when you made the ring. However, you’ll need to form the string into a flowerleaf by looping the string and when you think you’ve made a large enough leaf, you bend the string in the opposite direction (sort of making an eight with the wire) and then make a new leaf. You can have the new leaf look the same as the first or you can make it different as you choose. The amount of leaves is also up to you, but remember to place each new leaf in a way so it won’t get mixed with one of the previous ones. You may do this by using a bit of wire each time you make a new leaf.

If you want more than four or five leaves, an idea is to make several smaller flowers and then place them atop of the other afterwards, that way your flower will get more layers. You should however remember that you’ll need to have some extra wire when you’ve finished with your flower, so that you can fasten your flower to you ring.

When having done that you’ll have made a nice and smartly looking ruling ring. Happy making.