Using Head Pins, Eye Pins, and Jump Rings:
These “findings” are used to produce what we like to call “dangles”. On a small scale, these can be jewelry parts. A little larger and they can be embellishments on just about anything: art dolls, bottles, wall hangings, collages, cards, medicine bag necklaces, - and on and on.

An Eye Pin (far left) essentially has a jump ring at each end. It can hang from something and something can be hung from it as well.

A Head Pin (near left) creates the end of a dangle. When a plain head pin is used, the bottom bead is the last thing you see on the dangle.

Jump Rings are used to connect dangles and other parts - for example, to hang a dangle from an earwire to make an earring - or to connect lots of dangles to each other to make a necklace.

While it’s true that eye pins have their own version of a jump ring at either end, it is often advantageous to add an extra jump ring to the connection - to make it hang looser and often, to change the direction in which the dangle faces. You will notice if you were to connect the two dangles shown above directly to each other, it would mean one of them would have to turn sideways. While it wouldn’t affect much with these dangles because they look the same from any angle, many beads and charms have “faces” which must be viewed from a certain side.
Decorative Head Pins:
Although, as we mentioned earlier, making plain head pins produces pretty rough results, it is very easy to make decorative head pins yourself. Instead of a “head”, you make a spiral, squiggle, or other shape at the end of the wire which will act to stop beads from falling off.
A Spiral, River Path, and Square Spiral serve as “stops” at the bottom of these decorative head pins.
To make a Spiral head pin, begin like you are making an eye pin but don’t make that first right angle bend. Just place the jaws of your round nose pliers at the end of the wire and start turning. Keep turning - shaping the wire with your free hand as you go, until your spiral is as large as you like. Then, make a right angle bend and straighten the remainder of the wire piece to make the “pin” so beads can be added.

The Square Spiral is made with the chain nose pliers - using the very tips of the jaws. Make the smallest right angle bend possible at the end of the wire. Place your pliers right against that bend and make another. Continue to make right angle bends aligning your pliers with the last corner made, so the bend you are making will be just a little bit larger. This one takes practice! Depending where you make your final bend to create the “pin” part, you can have a square or a diamond design as a result. Make the bend in the middle of a side for a square, and at a corner to create a diamond shape.

The River Path is made with the round nose pliers. Start with a slight turn at the very end of the wire, then make progressively larger zig-zag turns, refining the shape with your free hand as you go. You can create a Lightning Bolt by doing the same thing with the chain nose pliers - making your bends with a sharper angle.
The decorative shapes you have made create a “stop” against which beads can be stacked to make a dangle.

Hammering the shapes flat with your bench block and chasing hammer will give them a completly different and more “sparkly” look, because hammering creates faceted surfaces which catch the light in interesting ways. Do not hammer the straight pin part because the beads would no longer pass over it if you did.

See the photo below left for a comparison of the same shape before and after hammering.
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