Jewellery-Making Supplies

[Serpentine]

I make jewellery out of dice, and I'm having trouble with some materials, specifically:

1. The beading wire. Maybe I'm just particularly rough with my jewellery, but I've had a bracelet and a necklace break on me - the latter last night, when I dropped it. It wasn't any of the crimping beads not being done properly or anything, which is reassuring for me, but the wire itself giving out, which is not. Does anyone know why that might be happening, and/or have suggestions for other wire?

2. The mini dice for the bracelets. I can get the green, purple and blue Interferenze dice reasonably easily, but any other types are damn near impossible to track down, and at the moment I particularly need red and white or clear ones. Anyone know anywhere that sells mini D&D dice? At this rate I'm gonna have to start buying the precious and semi-precious stone ones (not necessarily a bad thing, but will jack up my prices dramatically).

[Serpentine]

Guess that's a no to both, then :/ Dang.

[UnluckyPotato]

*delurks*

Hi, I make professional jewelry. What kind of wire do you use? Even good quality wire is not really awesome quality... bracelets are going to break with wear and there's little to be done about it. Your best bet for it is to get the thickest wire you can, which is usually .60mm wire.

It is an unfortunate truth of jewelry that it will break, the best you can do is minimize the chances for as long as you can. For stretch jewelry you really like, use the nylon coated elastic so that when it snaps it will be able to cling to the nylon.

Other than that, if you want something REALLY durable, get 80lb test fishing line. Use thick leather style crimps instead of crimp beads for them. These have had the best luck but due to customer preference I rarely make them any more as they are not really flexible.

You can also try memory wire loops, they tend to eventually sag instead of break however.

I'm not sure how you get the holes in the dice, but reaming the hole as smooth as possible on all beads is also good. You can also get thin french wire coils and use that along the length of the wire, but that gets expensive really quickly.

It depends where exactly the break points are happening, as sometimes it can be specific problem beads, wire quality, pulled too taught, etc.

[Serpentine]

That's really helpful, thanks. I may try experimenting with fishing line. What do you mean by "thick leather style crimps"? I'm not ssure whether I've seen them, although it's possible I have but didn't know what they were.
Looking at the necklace, the beading wire snapped nearly half-way down. Fairly neat snap, too. It's frustrating...

With the dice, I just use a drill. Have to be careful to avoid the bit getting stuck, but it works reasonably well. The mini dice, though, I almost always keep intact for these bracelets - the point is that you can take them out and use them. I can't believe how hard it is to find these dice, is all.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[UnluckyPotato]

http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/medium-nickel-cord-crimp-value-packs-175612/

You can get them on ebay too if you dig. Make sure to use e6000 or hypo cement with them to secure it.

Does it have a pendant on the necklace that would be causing rough areas? If so you can solve that by putting the pendant on a charm-bracelet drop bead (the beads these hummingbirds are dangling from (http://www.ebay.com/itm/8pcs-Tibetan-Silver-Woodpecker-Dangle-European-Beads-Fit-Charm-Bracelet-f12-/181053164302?pt=US_Charm_Charm_Bracelets&hash=item2a279c0b0e))