How to Make Jewelry; DIY Earrings (Part 2 of 4) Beginners Tutorial

I'm going to show you how to make some earrings. So earrings are really, really simple to make. But there are a few different kinds. So you can take a look at the small selection we have here. To begin with, I'm going to show you how to make a single drop earring, which are like these little ones. blue ones, which I'm just going to show you. So they're little dangling ones, and they've just got A small ball at the end. Afterward, I'm going to show you how to make some multi-strand ones. Like these. So it's quite similar to the single drop, but you have two or three drops on them. and there are some long ones, or there are also some short ones. So you can really experiment with your designs and get something that suits your style. So for making a simple drop earring: all you need are your side cutters, your round nose pliers, a selection of beads that you want to put on your earring and then there are two different types of findings. The first one is called a head pin, and a head pin is basically a relatively straight piece of wire, although They're often not straight, but it doesn't matter for what we're doing, and I've got silver-plated. head pins with a ball on the end. So you can get different ends for your head pins, and you just Buy them like this. You can make your own as well, but for beginners we'll start with ready-made. findings. So I quite like the ball end ones, but you can also have flat end ones or eyelets at the and which are like little loops. Once you have your head pin, you're going to thread on the beads. that you want for your earring. So I'm going to start with a small brass-colored bead and go with a nice turquoise-speckled round bead, and end with the same one again. Now, at this point you can really have fun with your designs because I can look at that and think, well, do I I'd like to wear that as an earring, and if not, just take it all off and start over. But once you're satisfied with your design, you can thread on as many beads or as few beads as You're the only one who has to be careful of one thing: we're going to make a loop at the very top. Leave about just over a centimetre of the head pin, and you can buy different lengths. Head pins are about five centimeters long. You can buy shorter ones if you're doing a lot of work. small earrings, or you can buy longer ones if you want big dangly pieces. So once you've got your design, and you're happy with it, we're going to need to make a loop at the top. As we've got quite Small earrings—we need to cut a little bit off the head pin. So this is a tricky part in a way. because you have to decide exactly where to cut, and it's one of those things that really comes with practice, but somebody once told me a quite useful trick—that it's the same size as your little pinky finger. So if you place your little pinky finger on the top of your top bead, then you want to cut exactly where that ends, okay, so this is just a guide. Another guideline is that it's normally A little more than a centimeter, so once you've got your place sorted, just give it a nice cut. and you're going to do the same on both. Whenever you're making earrings of any kind you always want to do whatever you do to one to the other one straight away so that you don't Forget it, and so you don't end up going too far forward and getting lost, not knowing how far to cut. Again, always cut down into the bead mat. I often forget that, and then the wires go flying. off everywhere. Great, so now we're ready to make our loops. Now making a loop isn't that easy when you try it first, so don't worry if your first loops aren't perfect. As with everything that you learn that practice makes perfect, and the more you do it, the better you'll get. Make sure you've got the right pliers at the first stage. Whenever I'm teaching people to make loops and they really Get stuck? It's normally because they've got the wrong pliers, so make sure that your pliers are round all the way around so that you get a really nice loop shape. Then you're going to Place the very tip of your wire into your pliers about one centimetre down from the top. but you want to make sure there's absolutely nothing sticking out the other end, okay? It's really important that nothing sticks out the other end and get a nice strong grip. Then I'm going to hold the end of my earring and just twist it all the way around as far as it can go to make as much as much of a loop as possible. At that point I'm going to take my pliers out and I can have a little look. at what I've got so far. If you can see, I've got a loop, but it's not completely closed. And it's really, really important with your earrings to get them a hundred percent closed. otherwise you'll be wearing them while walking along, and you'll feel one fall off because there's a a small gap that's just widened. So to close it, I pop my pliers back into the loop that I've created and just push with my finger to close that final little bit, and then I've got a complete one I've finished the loop at the end of my bead. I'm going to do exactly the same on the other side. So again, take your pliers all the way to the end, make sure you've got a really flat edge, and just push. All the way around, take your pliers out, or you can just leave them in and twist and close. getting your loops a hundred percent closed is one of the most important parts of making any earring like this, so really practice on that bit. So we're nearly there; all we need to do now is add Your ear wires. So this is another finding we've already had head pins, and now we've got ear wires. and ear wires are the part that hook into your ear. So I'm going to take the end of an ear wire Take my round-nose pliers again, and you can just open up the little loop at the end. Okay, just squeeze it out, then I'm going to take the loop I've created and thread it through. Close the end of the ear wire and squeeze your pliers to secure it again. again making sure it's a hundred percent closed, and then you've got your first Drop the dangling earring and do the same on the other side—just thread it on, the first time. You do these, they might take you a little while, but once you get used to them, they take seconds. to make, and then you've got your finished earrings, nice and professional, ready to wear and they match my jumper. So now that you've made your first simple drop earring, you're ready to move on to something a little bit more advanced, and something that's really nice to do is some dangling earrings. So we're using the same materials, the same techniques, but we're just adding three different ones on and with these ones, um, I've only put one bead, and I've left a big gap which I always think it's quite a nice design, but you could thread your beads all the way up if You wanted to, so we're going to have a go at making these. So I'm going to take three gold. gold-plated head pins, and this time I'm using gold-plated ones instead of silver, just to show a little bit of variation, it's exactly the same process for using gold or silver-plated. So I'm going to take Three for each earring, so I've got six all together, and I've got six nice peach-colored ones. faceted beads that I'm going to use—I'm just going to use the same beads on each one, but you could mix it up and have different colors and designs. So to start off with I want to have My head pins are all different lengths because that way, when they dangle, like these ones You can see the balls all end at different lengths; you could just have them all the same. length if you wanted to, but I think it's quite nice to have the stepped lengths. So for each earring I'm going to leave one head pin full length, then I'm going to take one head pin from Each earring, so that would be two, and I'm just going to cut off about a centimeter, just marking it. I did it with my pliers, and these are your side cutters again—always down into the mat and any scrap pieces of wire, you can just throw them away because they're only plated. If we're working with solid gold, you'd want to keep them, but I think for plated ones, it's very affordable, so There's really not much point in keeping your scraps unless they're particularly large. The second one is up to you—you could either take a very small piece off the top or go for A really large bit with these ones, I'm going to go for a quite large bit just to show the variation, so I'm going to go for about a centimetre and a half, perhaps, and when I'm making jewelry, I'm quite, um, I suppose you could say organic with my measurements, I kind of just go with the flow, but I know a lot of people want very specific measurements, so you can use a ruler or a tape measure to measure it out so you always get exactly the same length if you I want to do it too. So now I'm ready to string my beads on, so I'm going to put them all on together. As I said in the last video, it's really important when you're making earrings to make the pair together. Never want to just make one earring, especially something like this We're going to make loops in a second; it's going to be very difficult for you to create. the exact same length on the opposite side, unless of course you want a non-matching pair Alright, so now I'm ready to make my loops, so just as you did in the last video, pop it into your round nose pliers and all the way around now you'll notice when you make a loop it's often on one side of the head pin; and if you want to centralise that loop, you just pop your pliers back in right at the core of the loop at the end of the loop and just very slightly Twist it back, and then you'll see it's nice and centralized, so I'll show you that again. so we're making the loop in the same way that you did; you pop the end into your pliers. Make Of course, make sure nothing is sticking out the other end, wrap it around and close it nice and tight. and once again you'll see it's almost like a nine shape, rather than centralized, so I'm going to put my pliers back in and just twist it back a little bit—now, sometimes when you do that Your loop opens like that—that's fine. You just go back in again with your pliers and twist it around. So I'd really encourage you to just play around with your pliers and some wire as well You know, the more you get used to using it, the easier it becomes, and once you've been doing it for a while, jewelry for a little while, you'll be doing loops in your sleep, but they are one of the come out perfectly at first. These are the trickier aspects of beading when you're just starting out, so don't be too hard on yourself if they don't. Always work straight away again. Practice makes perfect, so I'm going to do a loop exactly the same. with all my other ones, and once again I just remind you that the most important thing about your loops at this stage are that they're a hundred percent closed, obviously. It's lovely to have perfect circular loops, but that's not as important as making sure that they're closed That can come with time, great. So let's finish those up, and then we're ready to Put them onto our ear wires, so once again I have some nice gold-plated ear wires this time. And as before, I'm just going to open the loop whenever you open the loop in your ear wires. you only want to open it as much as necessary because you don't really want to distort the circular shape, so just a little bit open, just enough to thread them on—I'm threading on All three of my head pins with the beads on the ends are like little berries, and I'll take mine Pliers again, brown nose, just close the loop, and it should dangle nicely—same on the other side. and I'm threading the longest one first, then the second longest, and then the shortest, but You can do any order, play around with it, just remember to do the same on both sides. and close your loop Great, and there you have your very own dangly earrings.