Cameo Pearl Earrings | Jewelry 101

Hey, Tool School. We've got this really cool set of bright-colored cameos. Baroque kind of style is very in this year, so we're going to do a little earring with just a little gluing and a little wire wrapping, and that's going to be it. So let's get into the demo. I've got four of my tools. I have got my one-step looper, six-step bale-shaping plier, round-nose plier, chain-nose plier, flush cutter. Then I've got some bead fix, some glue, any kind of glue will do. Epoxy, two-part epoxy is the best glue, or E6000 is the best glue. If you don't have that, we've got a great glue set. I've got 22-gauge wire, and I've got a reaming tool. I've got two little glue-on bales, and then I've got my pearls and my cameo. So let's get going. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to prep our cameo for gluing our bales. Yeah, our glue-on bales. Okay, so we're going to prep the back. So that's why I brought this reaming tool. So we just want to scratch up the back in the places where we're going to glue the bale on. That is going to give ... So this is a real smooth surface, and it's real hard for glue to stick really well on such a smooth surface, so we want to rough it up a little bit, give the glue kind of something to grip onto. So we're just going to use this reaming tool, and this is so soft. These are so soft that you can really get a lot of texture here on the back, give yourself a lot of extra grip. So we're just going to go a couple different directions here, really rough this up really good. And sometimes I'll even like poke kind of holes down in it. You're just basically creating more surface area for the glue to settle into, and surface area at different angles, which helps with like limit, like pull away from your Cavachon. If glue can stick to the side of a surface and the top of the surface, it's harder for it to come off because it's kind of like down on the side too, gripping, if that makes sense. So just make sure you're giving your ... plenty of places for your glue to grip onto. Then we're going to do the same thing on the opposite side, roughing this up. Again, making some little dents or divots, giving our glue somewhere to settle into. Okay, so let me show you all the back. So I've wiped it off, so that's how much we've roughed that up. You can see my little holes that I made that kind of scratched up surface. All that white stuff is where I've made scratches in the surface for my glue to stick to. Now we're going to do the same thing to these bales. They have this kind of grid section right there. This one in particular, some of them are totally smooth. So this one, we don't need to worry about it as much because it's got that grid that's giving you almost like teeth for the glue. But I still am going to ... Looks like this has glue on it already. I still am going to rough it up a little bit just for my own peace of mind, kind of. That aside. Yeah, these have already been glued. So if I can get some of that extra glue off that is on there from ... So one thing when you're doing this with a reamer, your bit wants to come off. So we also have files. So you can get a flap file and you can file it down that way. And it just doesn't come apart like your reamer does a little bit. When you're reaming on a flat surface like that, I don't know what it is necessarily about the flat surface that makes your tool want to come, makes your bit want to pop out. So files are always good to have on hand. Okay, now we are going to glue and then we're going to set this aside to dry. So I'm going to just move this over here. We're going to take our glue and we're just going to drop a little bit. Oh my gosh. There we go. Dot and a dot. And then as straight as we can. And then the other one again. Might have to move it a little bit. All right. So we're just going to set that aside while we make our loops and things on our pearls. Okay, now I've got some 22 gauge wire and we're going to use that to do everything. We're going to wrap our pearls in it and we are going to make our ear wire out of it. You can make your ear wire out of 20 gauge if you like that better. It doesn't matter to me. And a lot of people feel like the 22 gauge ear wires are more comfortable in their ear. So it's totally up to you what you want to do. Let's set that aside for the ear wire. Okay, so for the orange pearl, I did like almost like a teardrop wrap on this one. So we are, I just wanted it to hang a little different than the other pearl. So we're going to come a little ways down our wire. Not all the way. We're going to leave the longer tail on one side and we're going to come up and around. This is kind of, well, this is how I wrap a brio or anything that's teardrop shaped. So we're going to crisscross it up there at the top above our pearl. Then I go, I grab my chain nose pliers. I get my long tail and I point it straight up and down like that. Then I grab my short tail and we're just going to come around our pearl real quick. Trim that tail. And then you can, at this point, you can either loop it or you can do a pigtail. It looks like on that one I did a pigtail for some reason. So I'm going to do another pigtail. I cannot close this off yet because I've got to add it to my cabochon. But I get the loop made and then I'm going to set this aside and we'll add that on there in just a minute. Now my white pearl, I did with a looper. So grab my, I don't know why I did so many different types of loops here. Grab my looper. We're going to make ourselves an eye pin. My pearl probably won't go over that. Okay. And now drop our pearl on our 22 gauge wire here. And so, and on your pearl, you need your loops to be perpendicular to each other. So they need to be going the opposite direction. So I like to kind of hold my loop so that I can guide it into my looper the way I want it to sit so that I can control the way my loop is facing on this earring. So I want one facing forward and one facing sideways. So if you'll look at this, I've got one going one direction and one going the other direction. I'll hold that up again. See that? That's going to help. This is going to control the way, the direction your cabochon face is. And so make sure, you can always do it after the fact, but I don't like to make extra work for myself. So I try to do it beforehand. That way I don't have to go back and fix anything later. So then we're going to make a little ear wire out of our other piece of 22 gauge wire with our one-step looper. This is a one-step looper. It's a stepped plier. So you've got six different sizes of loops that you can make all the way along the tips of the plier. So this is your smallest over here and you end with your largest over here. So you can make all kinds of things, jump rings, coils, ear wires, all kinds of cool things that you can do with a six-step bail shaping plier. So we are going to grab the very end of our wire here and we're going to make a loop around our smallest step. So around that one right there. So we're just going to curl our wire around that step like that. Now we're going to take this out and holding the loop, we're going to flip our plier over and we're going to slide this wire with our loop butted up inside that valley there between the tips of your wire so that in that valley, just snuggle your loop up in there nice and tight. And then we are going to just come around our largest step right here. This is going to be the part that goes through your ear. So we're going to come around like that, give that a swoop. And ta-da. We've got a nice shepherd's hook ear wire. So I will just trim that tail off. And then we want to make sure that we are roughing up the edge of the end of, I mean, smoothing out the end of our ear wire. There's a cup. If you have this reaming tool, it comes with a little cup burr that you can switch. And that's a lot easier than doing it this way. We got a cup burr here. So we are going to pop our reaming bit out and we're going to drop our cup burr in to this little, what do you call this? The clampy part. All right. So we're going to see that, see how the end of this is a cup shape. You can see it goes down inside of it. And then it's got little teeth in there, down inside that. So we're going to just slide that right on the end of our wire and it just fits perfectly on there. Just going to give it a couple spins. Nice and smooth. You can run your finger across it to make sure you don't have any sharp points. Perfect. All right. So that's ready to go. I'm going to put that back in its package. I knew it. Okay. Here we go. These are sticking to each other. Okay. All right, all right, all right. Now we are going to start assembling the earring. Okay. So we are going to attach our orange pearl to the bottom of our cameo. So we'll snap that onto the bail that we glued on. I'm going to go in with my chain nose pliers. I grab my loop and then we're just going to finish off that coil. Like I said, you can use your, you can make that first coil and then use your looper to make your loop and then you don't have to coil again. I don't know why I did this this way, but I did. So I want them to match. All right. So we've got that guy dangling from the bottom. And if you want a shorter pair of earrings, stop here. Add your ear wire up here. I like a little bit longer ones if I'm going to wear dangly earrings. So I added another pearl up here at the top. So I added the white one to kind of carry the white in the cameo. Just open that loop up, drop that on. There we go. And now for our ear wire. So we'll just open up the loop on our ear wire. Slide that earring on, making sure that our cameo is facing forward. Close our ear wire up and we're done. Ta-da! Isn't she pretty? And you got a matching pair of cameo earrings. And if you're a Tennessee Vol fan, this is a really cute kind of fancy volunteer orange earring. It's a little bit, maybe a little bit more red, but you could still get away with it for sure. Thanks for joining me today, guys. I hope you enjoyed today's demo. If you need any of the tools and supplies that we used today, check out the links in the description below. And while you're down there, I want to know what your best trick is for gluing veils onto things like cameos or cabochons. Let me know in the comments and don't forget to like, subscribe and ring that bell so you don't miss any future videos. Bye, y'all.