I am excited to announce that I am this week's Crafty Superstar over at Cut Out + Keep! For the next few days I will share here they tutorials I wrote for them. I haven't written a lot of tutorials so I was super excited to take up the challenge. Enjoy!
I am all about easy – and when you have a really great pair
of beads, you really don’t need to do a whole lot to do something fun and
funky.
The supply list is short:
Two beautiful beads
Chain that fits through the holes of the beads
Two ear wires or wire to make your own
First, play around with the chain and the
beads to decide what length you want your earring. A trick I use to test earring length and to make
sure the chains are the same length are to string them on a wire. Way easier than counting tiny links!
If you are using ear wires, open the loop on the ear wire,
connect one end of the chain, string the chain through the bead, and then
connect the other end of the chain to the ear wire loop and close it. If are want more “swing” or want to add more bling
(like the pair at the top left) you can attach everything to a jump ring, and
then attach the jump ring to the ear wire.
If you would like to
make your own ear wires – which makes matching the chain easier – here are the
steps. I usually start with 6 inches or
so of wire. You can fix it later if it’s
too long, but you can never fix it if it’s too short!
String one end of the chain onto the lop, put the chain
through the bead, and string the other end of the chain on to the loop. Grab the loop right under where the wires
cross, and wrap the horizontal wire around the vertical wire 2-3 times.
Trim the excess wire, and then do all of the
steps for the second earring. On both
earrings, bend the vertical wire forward. 
Using a wrap and tap plier (or a sharpie pen), bend both wires
around. I like to do this at the same
time so that the hooks are similarly sized.
Cut off excess, and then use a chasing hammer and a block to slightly
flatten both sides of the ear wire – this will harden it. Please be careful to keep your bead and the
chain away from the hammer – you don’t want to mush those! Enjoy!
