In my last few posts, here, here, and here, I’ve been talking about beads and beading projects. Here’s a look at another tool that allows you to do interesting things with wire and beads.

Image shows a metal board with holes in it. Some of the holes have pegs of assorted sizes and wire is wrapped around the pegs.
The wire jig and some wire.

This particular wire jig is is actually called a Thing-A-Ma-Jig. It comes with an assortment of pegs of various diameters and you can place them in different configurations to make a large assortment of designs.

Clipped from Fire Mountain Gems website for illustration (October 21, 2021)

There are wire jigs that are designed to do only a few wire patterns, such as this one that is used to make repeatable designs for earrings or pendants.

As you can see, there are limited options with this jig, but the design is very repeatable. If you are making a lot of of a particular style of wire item, a specific jig like this would be ideal.

This jig comes with the pegs a tool to help push the wire loops together to help the design to lay flat and stay together.

With the Thing-A-Ma-Jig, I have to flatten the wire with pliers.

I’ve only made one intricate creation with the wire jig. This butterfly was made with several pieces of wire with beads fed on as I was twisting, and then the section of wire were joined together. The sections in the upper wings were done in pieces then combined. The zigzag in the lower wing sections are one piece of wire.

Wire jig and beaded butterfly.

Resources

The Thing-A-Ma-Jig is another tool I purchased on Fire Mountain Gems’ website. You can find it here. As always, I have no affiliation with them except being a satisfied customer.