Beaded earrings for a set

I made companion earrings to wear with my beaded pendant — the image-transfer one. While I was looking up stitches to use, I ran into a tutorial by Bronzepony Beaded Jewelry for exactly the design I had in mind! That’s the second time this month I’m running into ready-to-use recipes for stuff that I want to make. (The first one was for my latest knitting project.)

Beaded earrings using CRAW

For these earrings, I used the size-8 green beads and smaller size-15 brown beads that I’d used for the pendant. I made 12 units of Cubic Right Angle Weave (CRAW) with the larger beads, and embellished them with the smaller beads — one small bead between two large ones on the inner curves of the cubes, and two small beads in a similar fashion on the outer curves.

CRAW was not difficult to understand at all — not all difficult. I mean, it’s way too easy to imagine constructing a cube — first a floor, then walls, then ceiling. The execution of the first unit, though, was a different matter. Invariably, while I pulled the thread through the beads, I would lose my grip on the tiny setup that I created thus far, and then, it would be extremely difficult to bring the orientation back to where I was, and figure out which bead to go into next. I would just turn and turn the connected beads in my hand, all the while scratching my head. I tried to use the stop bead as reference, but it didn’t work for me. I even tried Jill Wiseman’s ‘taco’ style of construction, but with similar confusions.

After a couple of failed starts, I solved the problem by threading my stop bead into position at the center of the reinforced first square. That helped provide a ‘proper’ reference point for me. It was smooth sailing from then on.

When I was done constructing the drops, I threaded a couple of faux pearl beads into head pins, and attached each pearl-duo to a piece. I made eye loops at the top, and added ear wires to complete the earrings.

Pearl dangle earrings

I’d made a pair of wavy pearl dangle earrings a while ago, but noticed I wasn’t wearing them much. So I decided to give them a quick makeover. I twisted the waves into rings (still squiggly ones though) around the pearls. Heh, I really didn’t want to waste that wire even if it was slightly dented from my earlier bad handling. 😛

Surprisingly, this small change makes the earrings cuter and more appealing to me. I’ve already worn them twice!

Background: My valet tray. Embellishment: Fringe from my macramé ornament. Looks like my DIY items are wonderful props! 😀

Torus necklace

Remember the Torus pendant that I’d made a while ago? There are more of those metallic-silver tori in my stash — three, to be precise — and I’d really wanted to use them for something. Earrings were my persistent initial thought, but these tori are too big for earrings. I know my wrists are small for a bracelet with a torus focal piece, and I didn’t want to make another pendant. So I decided they would all go together in one necklace. Of course, they needed something else to add to the look, and what better company than some jumbo pearl beads from my stash! 🙂

Torus necklace

I’d also recently bought some bead caps online, and they turned out larger than I expected. (This is a problem with Indian online retail — there aren’t enough details provided to trust that a purchase would work out well, and sometimes, the return processes turn out to be painful.) I decided to keep them just in case I bought large beads that would fit. For my jumbo pearl beads, these were the only bead caps suitable, albeit slightly oversized. So, well, I used them.

I cut wire lengths for the pearl beads, threaded each wire through a pearl between two bead caps, and made eye loops on both ends. I didn’t fully close the eye loops yet.

I then cut longish lengths of the wire (around 15cm). I wrapped two wires per torus, each one around roughly-opposite points on the torus. The wrapping itself is a simple one, with one end of the wire turned into an outward-facing eye loop, and the other end turned into a spiral that lies on the torus itself. I connected the pearl bead eye loops to the eye loops on the tori, and shut all eye loops.

To finish the necklace, I attached the ends of a silver-colored chain to the end pearl beads. This just might be a statement piece for me. 😛

Pearly set

Since I’m resigned to the fact that I only have access to limited kinds of wire to make jewelry, I’ve been thinking of ways to use all of the stuff that my sister had bought a long, long time ago. And on a leisurely day recently, I made this pearly jewelry set —

Pearly Earrings

Pearly Pendant

Pearly Charm

I used large pearl beads (about 1.5cm in diameter), bead caps, head pins and jump rings for these pieces. And of course, earring findings for the dangles. I only had to string the pearl beads and the bead caps on the head pins, and make eye loops from the wire, so the set came out pretty quickly. I think the longest time amongst them all was for shaping the wire for the pendant hook. (Man are those head pins hard…) I then decided to add a jump ring to it so it’s not really a hook now, it’s a decorative addition.

I’m glad I chose these bead caps — they make the pieces look somewhat traditional, don’t they?

Wavy pearl dangle earrings

Wavy pearl dangle earrings

It’s been quite a while since I bought a wire jig. (It’s very sad that they don’t seem to be available in Bangalore.) I hadn’t used it at all, so I decided it’s time for a practice project using the jig. With an idea that was completely different from how it turned out eventually, I arranged a few pegs on the jig in a zigzag shape. I bent my wire around the pegs, but even after a couple of tries with different pieces of wire, the results weren’t as I’d intended. The two pieces of wire looked similar to each other, though, so I thought I’d make a pair of earrings from them.

Going through my stash, I came across a couple of large white pearl beads that had a pinkish sheen, and thought I’d add them to the end of the now-wavy wire. The ends weren’t so long that the pearl could be strung and an eye loop could be made while retaining the wavy shape, so I decided to just leave the end of the wire inside the bead. The wire is anyway hard enough to not lose its shape once strung, and the earrings aren’t going to be used very heavily or roughly, so I needn’t worry about them falling apart.

As for the wire jig, I’m going to keep practicing!

Beaded earrings with spiral decorative wire danglings

Beaded earrings with spiral wire

I’d had this idea brewing in my head about huge pearl-bead earrings with seed-bead encased wire attached above and below the pearl beads. I first used two beaded wires for each earring, but the effect wasn’t really that great. I then ditched one of the beaded wires. Now, the earring looked a bit weird. I tried hammering the wire so it can be used by itself, without seed beads on it. Nope, didn’t like that either. Finally, I decided to just make a rough spiral from a flimsy, flat wire.

I love the result. The seed-beaded wire is firmly attached to the earring, but the spiraled wire dangles freely, giving the earring an added effect when the spiral moves and turns about.