Pearl Bobby Pins

This is my first tutorial!!  I sold these bobby pins at my last craft fair and they sold really well.  A friend of mine have been purchasing these from the swap meet and wanted to make her own.  I tried to describe the process to her over the phone, but it didn’t go off so well, so this tutorial is for her (and anyone else who finds it useful).

What you need:

• One bobby pin
• Approx. 6 inches of 26 gauge wire
• One glass pearl

Before you begin make sure you file down the sharp ends of the cut wire.

• Slide the pearl to the middle of the wire
• Bend the wire down on both sides of the pearl

• Slide one end of the wire onto the loop of the bobby pin

• Bend the other end of the wire and stick it through the opposite end of the bobby pin loop.

•   The pearl now sits on top of the bobby pin.

• Take one end of the wire and begin wrapping the wire below the pearl.

• Take the other end and wrap below the pearl.  The wrapped pearl bobby pin is finished.

I have made these with beads and freshwater pearls.  I prefer to use 26 gauge wire because I’ve found it is the easiest to work with, but I have used 22 gauge and 28 gauge.  If you don’t have strong hands, you’ll need pliers to grab the end of the 22 gauge wire to wrap. In the tutorial, I also use bobby pins.  You can use hairpins, but I’ve found that these bend too much while working with them.The bobby pins in the picture below were made with glass beads and 22 gauge wire.

The bobby pins pictured below were made with freshwater pearls and 28 gauge wire. Notice these are wrapped a little different than the tutorial.  This type of wrapping works better with higher gauge wire.

Hope you found this helpful.

This entry was posted on 7. January 2011 at 22:42 and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.