O' Fun For...my newly ear-holed sister

My sister Chelsey turned 21 this week. We were going to go get drunk, but that fell through when we realized that we don't drink. Blast! Instead, I thought I'd do something equally wild, and make a pair of earrings for her newly-pierced ears. Oh yes. I just get crazy sometimes. Don't try to stop me.

I made two pairs of the same earrings since my sister-in-law Corin requested a pair to go with the necklace I made for her last birthday, and these happen to match. The two pairs turned out a little different from one another. One dangled down longer, since I seem to have issues making the same thing more than once. I'll give the danglier ones to Corin, since she is the more experienced earring-wearer. You never know who might lose an eye if you give an overly-dangly pair to a rookie. Safety first.



Since I started this blog with the hopes of contributing to the internet-craftiness-sources that taught me all I know, I have made yet another picture-heavy tutorial for you! I learned, though, why there weren't many wire-wrapping tutorials out there when I was trying to learn. See, you need two hands to do the wrapping, and that leaves very few good options for taking the pictures. I could...

A) Try to mess with the timer on the camera. Get lots of dark, blurry shots of my shoulder or the wall behind me.
B) Hold the camera between my jaw and shoulder like when you talk on the phone while both hands are occupied. This results in more of the timer problems, coupled with the camera falling down my shirt. Those pictures might not make it past some of your internet content filters...
C) Ask my husband to spend half an hour watching me make the earrings so I would have my own personal cameraman for the event. The children will inevitably follow him into the room, resulting in a broken camera and one or more wire-cutting injuries. I decided I'd rather have him put the Christmas lights up.

So.... I took pictures of what things looked like in-between steps, since it left me with a free hand. If you get confused, Google wire-wrapping until you find a handier tutorial by someone who can manage multi-tasking and may actually know what they are doing. Also, the super-macro setting I used to focus on the tiny wire made it look like I have horrible man-hands. I have very lovely man-hands in real life...

*Disclaimer: I don't know much about this whole jewelry making thing, so I use a lot of made up names for stuff and fudge my way through most of it. I thought a tutorial by a beginner would help give people who wanted to try it out some confidence. If I can do it, so can you. (That's why I cook. Yan can do it.)

Step one: gather your tools. There is sterling silver jewelry wire... uhhh... some gauge that makes it bendy, but not too bendy? I don't remember what gauge. Time to Google for more information. Maybe this is not the most informative tutorial I have ever made... Baby nail-clippers to cut the wire, two sterling silver fishhooks earrings, flat-nosed jewelry pliers, tiny rounded pointy pliers (I should learn what to call all this stuff) and your beads.



Cut a nice long-ish (12 inches or more?) piece of the wire, and pull it through your fingers a few times to straighten it out a bit. Pinch it about 1" from the end with the flat pliers, and bend the ends down to get the wire the right shape to work with the teardrop bead. You'll have to straighten it out while threading, but this makes it easier to work with once it is threaded, I think.




Once the bead is threaded, bend the ends up towards the point of the bead and twist a few times. (Just like a twisty-tie for your bread bag.) Snip the extra from the short end.





Now make a loop by clamping the wire with the pointy pliers and wrapping around one plier-point. (This is where Google can clear things up again...) Pinch the loop with the flat pliers, and use your other hand to wrap the wire around a million times, starting directly below the loop and working down over the point of the bead as far as you want. Now, there is probably some magical technique I haven't run across yet that tells you how to finish this off so your wire doesn't lose its shape and get all bunchy, but I haven't learned it. I clip the wire just after turning past the edge of the bead, then bend it back at the tip or up or wherever I need to until the wire stays put. Pretty sure that's not the right way, but that's what I do.





Now take the wire leftover from the teardrop part, and make a tiny loop with the pointy pliers at one end. This is to hold your bead on the wire. You can get all fancy and make a swirly or something instead if you are feeling daring that day.



Thread your smaller beads onto the wire. For this pair of earrings, I made the three smaller-bead-danglies in three sizes: long, medium, and short, to make it awesome. Yes. It was awesome indeed. This picture is of the long one. Decide how long you want the dangly to be, and use your pointy pliers to bend the wire at a 90 degree angle there, and then make your loop. Now, don't mess with your loop too much. It probably won't be a nice pretty circle without a lot of practice, but that doesn't really matter. If you mess with reshaping it too much, it becomes weak. Then right when you have finished your lovely project, you put the earring on and the wire snaps and it falls apart. (That may have happened to me a few times...) After you make your loop, grip it with the flat pliers and use your other hand to wrap the wire down from the loop to the bead, like before with the teardrop, but you stop when you reach the bead. Clip the end close to the wrapped part. Mine look best when I focus on wrapping back and forth instead of trying to make the wire go downwards. (What does she mean, you say? Well, I make sense in my head, if not here...) Repeat for the other two round-bead danglies



Use your flat pliers to bend the loop on your fishhook earring to the side so you can slip your dangly-bead loops onto it. Start with the shortest round bead dangly. To attach the teardrop, make a loop in the end of a wire. About 1" or less up, make another loop perpendicular to the first, then clip. (See picture)





Put the teardrop-dangly on one end of this new loopy-wire thing, and thread the other end onto the fishhook loop. Make sure the pretty side of your teardrop wire will show when the earrings are hanging. (Not the oddly-cut and bent end of your teardrop wrapping.) Then add the medium round-bead dangly, then the longest round-bead dangly. Use the pliers to close the fishhook loop, and Ta-Da!!! You now have some amazing, sparkly earrings.





You can change up this design by using different beads, making the dangly parts different lengths, making more or less danglies, etc. For these red and black earrings I followed what I had done to make these ones a few months ago and made a few small changes.

So happy birthday Chelsey! (And additional Happy Birthday, Corin!)