'Beadalon' ear wires - a product review

After my New Venture post last week, The Bead Shop, Manchester has now sent me samples of a couple of the the items I shared with you - so I can try them out and write a review.

I am still in the process of making up some jewellery but the light is not great today and I want to do the products justice.

I have, however made some earrings using these 'beadalon' bail ear wires



As I mentioned in my previous post I have never seen or used these wires before so I was intrigued to see how they worked in reality. These ear wires come in two sizes small and large and I was sent a couple of pairs of each.
As I also mentioned in my previous post, normally I would attach a bail to the bead and then hang onto an ear hook - so my earring would look like this -

These 'Beadalon' pinch bail ear wires removes the need to attach a bail as it is already on the hook, so the same bead hanging from one of these bail ear wires now looks like this -

These Swarovski crystal hearts are on small pinch bail ear wires as is this pair of clear glass drops-

 

I then tried the large pinch bail ear wires and attached these black glass shaped bead.

I then asked the question does the bead have to be a drop? How about just using a round glass pearl instead.

I think this makes a really elegant earring and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

There are limitations with these ear wires. You have to consider the size of the bead it cant be too wide - you can open out the bail carefully - I found that the large bails opened easier than the small, but I was concerned that I might just open it a bit too far and snap off one of the wires, thankfully that didn't happen.
These earrings will only work for beads that have the hole running from front to back, if you attach it to a bead where the hole is near the top of the bead but running from side to side you will have the bead facing sideways.
You also need to be aware that the wires obscures a fairly large part of the bead, so this also might be a problem for some designs. I was concerned that it would take away the movement of the bead too, I like to see beads swinging from ear hooks and obviously these make the bead a lot more static but saying that, all but the glass pearl pair do still have some movement in them as the bail doesn't prevent side swing
Would I be happy to use these ear wires in future with my jewellery designs? yes I would, I believe these provide another design feature to earrings that was previously missing in my range and I look forward to including a selection of earrings on these ear wires in the future.

If you would like to have a go at making earrings using these wires don't forget to use the discount code generously offered to my readers from the Bead Shop -
Code:TBS012 this code will entitle you to 10% off and is restricted to 1 per person