Plant Wire Art - No Soldering Required

If you have a space in a wall that's missing a little something, this could be the answer.

Today I'll teach you how to turn a drawing into wire art, it looks amazing in a shadow box or even a regular frame.

With only few tools and materials, and no soldering required, anyone can make this masterpiece.

Wire (mine is 20 gauge)

A shadow box

Glue gun

Pliers

Scissors

Pencil

Paper

Begin by marking in a paper the size of your shadow box.

Draw something that's simple. While you're drawing, think the way you could bend the wire to achieve those shapes. Avoid making parts that have to be shaped in a different piece of wire and joined later.

I managed to make the planter with a single line then each plant will be made with a different piece of wire.

Using your sketch as a template, bend your wire to achieve the same shapes.

The best way to make it is by bending the slight curves using only your hands. The loops using jewelry pliers (with cone tips) and the corners with flat jewelry pliers. If you use toothed pliers, they'll make marks on the wire.

You can try avoiding the marks by wrapping them with duck tape. Or most pliers have tooth only at the tip and the rest is flat, use that flat section.

While
I was shaping the wire I realized that my sketch was too busy, that I wanted something simpler and I decided to only make three stems instead of five. Feel free to adjust your sketch if you feel that something is missing, or if one particular shape is difficult to achieve.

The pieces (stems) that are going to be attached later to the main shape (planter), need to have at least 1 extra inch of wire.

To attach the steams to the planter, twist the extra wire around the main shape and press with the flat pliers.

This step took me several attempts before succeeding. But once you get it right the next one is easier.

Put a lot of hot glue to the bottom of the wire art. Then stick it into the shadow box.

It really helps with stability to glue other parts, to other walls of the box. Like the leaves. You should consider from the very beginning, making your sketch with several contact points where you´ll glue the art.

My shadow box has a mirror at the back, it looks nice but it´s difficult to take good pictures of it. So I covered it with a black paper and now I can´t decide if I like it better with the mirror o with the black paper.