Celtic Bracelet Celtic bracelets and Celtic jewellery

Handmade Jewelry-Making Basics – What is a Crimp?

Good crimping practices and quality crimps play an important part in jewelry design, but many designers minimize the roles these components play in favor of the more visible components.

What is a jewelry finding?

In jewelry terms, a "finding" is a component of jewelry less than a finished piece.

What is a jewelry crimp?

A jewelry crimp is a jewelry finding pinched or pressed together with the purpose of holding findings onto a jewelry piece or fixing beads in place.  Crimp tubes, crimp beads, crimp-on eyes and crimp-on hooks are four forms of jewelry crimps commonly used.

Jewelry beads are spheres with the hole cut through.  When they are flattened, they usually form an hourglass shape.  Crimp tubes have a uniform diameter and flatten into rectangles.  Twisted crimp tubes have a spiral pattern cut into the tubes that might add patterns to the crimp, but they still flatten into rectangles.  Crimp-on hooks and crimp-on eyes have either a hook shape or an "eye" (a closed loop) attached to a tube made of heavier gauge metal.