Tutorial: earrings

I have been designing and building jewelry for the past ten years and one thing that really bothers me is poor execution. There have been numerous times at art fairs, gallery openings, artisan websites and even jewelry stores where the idea is amazing but the craftsmanship is a little rough.

Today, I thought I would share a few secrets to making earrings. Recently, I have been helping a lot of people improve their earrings to look more professional and all it takes is a few simple steps.

You will need: 

needle nose pliers

cutter tool

chain nose pliers

beads

headpins 

ear wires 

Headpins look like a piece of wire with a flat bottom... sort of like a sewing pin. 

A headpin is what you string the beads onto.

Using your needle nose pliers, you are going to bend the wire (right above the beads) at a right angle.

The next part is a little tricky and is where people often mess up!

In order to make a perfect loop you have to bring the wire back towards the beads. 

The best way to do this is to take your pinky finger and measure out a nails width of space and move your plier to that line.

Now that you have figured out where your plier should start. 

You are going to hold your pliers with your fingers pointing up towards you. 

This is very important!

If you hold your pliers with your fingers in towards your body you will not get the rotating motion needed to make a perfect loop.

Blurry but you get the point. Make sure you can see your fingers!

another pic with fingers up!

Then simply rotate your wrist: bringing your thumb towards you and exposing the backside of your hand. This turn of the wrist will pivot the wire back on itself. 

This will form half the loop.

Holding your wire as shown above, you will take the "tail" of your wire (or straight part) and curve it around the plier so that it forms a full loop. Using a needle nose plier is essential for this step because the wire forms to the curve of the plier.

Take the leftover straight wire and wrap it around directly above the beads. 

This is way more secure than simply cutting off the excess wire.

If you find that your wire is wrapping loosely you can squeeze it with your chain nose pliers.

Keep twisting until it is all secure. If necessary, cut off any leftover bits.

Using your chain nose pliers open the loop on your earwire. 

 Carefully close!

 Practice makes perfect but rotating that wrist will make all the difference in the world. 

I am uploading some of the earrings I've made on my Etsy shop right now. Come visit!

Thanks for looking. Love, Ms. Kate