Tuesday's Tutorial - Earring making

It's that time of the month again, and this time I will be showing you how to use some of the tools I introduced you to in the last tutorial.

How to make a pair of earrings

First let's take a look at what you need to make an earring.

Tools from left to right snipe nosed pliers, round nosed pliers , wire cutters.
materials ear hook, headpin and beads of your choice.

Next thread beads onto headpin in your chosen design.

I chose to use a Venetian glass bead, two tiny rocaille glass beads and a clear crystal bead.

Once the beads have been threaded on to the headpin you need to cut the wire leaving around 3/4 cm of wire above the bead ( just enough to make a neat loop).

I have to admit I wasn't looking forward to doing this as my fingers are always a state, one of the drawbacks of working with wire, so please ignore the state of my hands. I still felt as though it was necessary, as I wanted to show you how I work out where to cut the wire. I rest the earring on my index finger with the top bead in the centre of the 'ball' at the top and then cut at the nail. Well you can see where, from the picture above.

You are then left with a short piece of wire that needs to be made into a loop.

Use your round nosed pliers for this, hold onto the top of the wire and loop round towards the top bead.

Before closing the loop up totally, slip in ear hook.

( I really need a manicure)

Then close up loop using the snipe nosed pliers

Hold onto the end of the wire again and firmly push wire towards the hole of top bead, pushing into the index finger of hand holding the earring. Try and get the end of the wire to be as close as possible to the wire as it exits the bead but don't go past it.

You should then end up with a neat closed loop which will securely hold the ear hook.

  Then all you have to do is make another one to match!
Hope you enjoy making yours, of course if you would like further instruction on earring making you could always attend one of my workshops!