Do you buy ready-made jump rings for hanging your suncatchers? Expensive, aren’t they?
Here’s a tutorial showing how to make your very own rings from wire by winding it around a stick of bamboo and cutting them with wire cutters.
It’s a simple trick and will save you lots of money if you need lots of rings for your sun catchers and free hanging panels.
You can even upcycle by using wire taken from discarded electrical wiring. In fact, there’s nothing to be said against doing this!!!
And once you have rings filling your craft room, you can learn how to attach them neatly in this tutorial too.
Get thee over there immediately!
Can you tell me what type of metal hoop I can use for a stained glass wreath? I’d be soldering stained glass flowers and copper wire to it.
Try searching for macrame or dreamcatcher hoops. Make sure the metal is solderable and you’re away 🙂
Can you reccommend the best or type of copper wire to use please…I keep seeing so many options.
Would be great.
You can use either ready tinned copper wire or copper wire stripped from electrical wires or bought that you tin yourself. You don’t actually even have to tin it (thin layer of solder) as you can use it as is.
Gauge 14-16 is a good start.
When making jump rings, does it matter if the wire is tinned copper vs. aluminum?
You can solder tin, copper, brass, zinc, steel and bronze Eric. Basically all ferrous metals and all copper based alloys. Any white metals containing magnesium can’t be soldered.
Hope that helps. I just use copper wire which I tin (cover with a thin layer of solder) myself, it’s easy to find and can be recycled from electrical wire in all different gauges.
I use old electrical wire which is copper I strip the wire myself and cut into lengths. I’ve found it easier to tin the wire first before making the rings or hooks .
Oooh, funnily enough I’ve made a video on just this thing – nearly ready to put on my site. Thanks for the tip Diane; I’ll put a link to the video to this page once it’s up and running 🙂