Make Your Own Beaded Drop Earrings
With this simple technique you can make a variety of different earrings.
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Materials Needed (for one pair):
2 earhooks
or
ball earposts
with earbacks
2 headpins (and hopefully a few extras for practice)
2 or more beads
Tools Needed:
Wire cutters
Needlenose Pliers
Flat Pliers
1. Put your selected beads on one of the headpins.
2. With the flat end of the headpin pointing down, hold the wire as close to the beads as possible with the thin end of the needlenose pliers.
3. With your thumb, bend the end of the headpin to a 90 degree angle.
If the wire is too stiff to bend with your thumb, you might instead place the pliers 2-3 mm above the beads, then turning the pliers, make the 90 degree bend.
4. Cut the end of the wire if it is too long for your loop. The size of the loop will depend upon the diameter of the needlenose pliers, and your preference. A larger loop may be easier at first. 7-10mm may be a good length.
5. Follow steps 1-5 on the second earring npw so that you can cut the ends to the same length.
6. With the edge of the wire squeezed between needlenose pliers, turn the pliers half a turn to begin a loop.
7. At this point, for a better grip, I usually release the pliers and turn them back (a half turn) to the position where I had started the loop. Now finish the loop with another half turn. The loop might still have a gap at this point but you can finish that in step 10.
8. With flat pliers you can straighten the loop, if needed, so that the earring is one straight line.
9. Now you you need to re-open the loop sideways with flat pliers. Hold the pliers on the end of the loop and bend it to side just enough to allow the earwire or earpost to slip on.
For more information on this, check out my info on 'How to open and close a jump ring.'
10. Slip the earhook or earpost on and close the loop in the same way that you just opened it but now you can also press the end of the loop closed at the same time.
Note: some headpin wires are brittle and may weaken and break with too much bending. In this case I would make an almost full loop with just one long turn, then after attaching it to the earhook, squeeze the loop shut with flat pliers.
11. You are done. Put the earbacks on or put them on!
