Home-craft expert Kathi Cardinalli offers tips and techniques for turning ordinary wire into creative items for the home. Wire projects--updating accessories or making new wire pieces from scratch-- are quick and easy and provide immediate gratification. With a few twists of wire, candlesticks or bottles take on more importance in a room. You can be as elaborate or as simple as you like. Wire may be used as a decoration all by itself, or you can go a step further and decorate the wire as well. The only supplies necessary for working with wire are the wire itself and a few tools. You'll need wire snips and needle-nose pliers. Small pliers used in jewelry making work well for bending wire into tiny, intricate shapes. Wire comes in a wide variety of diameters and colors. Once you start looking for it, you'll see wire everywhere. Use thin, pliable florist's wire, brass or silver jewelry wire or bonsai-training wire, which comes in a beautiful dark-copper color. Silver armature wire, used by artists, is quite thick but surprisingly pliable. And check out your local hardware store for lots of wire choices, from thin copper wire to black mechanic's wire and bright silver solder wire. Wrap a colorful red bottle with silver wire and curlicue shapes (figure A). Add jewels with tiny bits of wire to hang off curlicues.
To embellish crystal candlesticks, wrap them with silver armature wire. Tightly wrap wire around the candlestick, and make a curlicue with needle-nose pliers to hold a piece of old jewelry (figure B). Make a freeform basket and embellish it with beautiful Czechoslovakian glass beads (figure C).
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