Aside from the desire to make unique, personalized accessories, the first step in making your own earrings is to find a great bead store. You'll need to make sure that the beads and other materials that you choose look good together, and that the holes in the beads will allow them to hang in the way you want. Next, you'll need to buy the hardware, including earwires and pins to attach those beads to.
When making your own jewelry, the source of the beads is very important. Entering a store should fill you with inspiration. Some stores specialize in natural beads — those made from various kinds of stones, gems, and other natural formations found in the earth. Others may specialize in handmade glass beads, or in plastic beads designed for children’s jewelry.
A good bead store will carry a variety of colors, shapes, sizes, and beads made from a range of materials. Common shapes include rounded, graduated, saucer, rondelle, rice-shaped, and seed-beads. The beads should catch your eye, and you should start to get ideas about what your earrings will look like. If you don’t find inspiration, find another store.
Next, begin to select your beads. Most stores use the tray system, where shoppers fill a tray with beads, writing down the number and per unit price on a provided pad of paper. Set the beads next to each other to see how they will look together. Also pay attention to the location of the hole in the bead. Some teardrop-shaped beads have holes at the top, whereas most symmetrical beads have holes in the middle. This will affect the placement of the bead and the way it hangs. In general, beads with the hole in the middle are used in the main body of the earring, and teardrop beads dangle off the ends.
The next step is selecting your hardware. The piece that goes through the ear is called an earwire, and is shaped like a question mark. The spine of the earring is called a pin. Pins are long, straight pieces of metal with either a round hoop at the end, as in the case of an eyepin, or a flat end as in the case of a headpin. Some variations include pins with decorative balls on the end. Beads are strung onto the pin, so the size of the hole cannot be larger than the end of the pin, or the beads will fall off.
Most hardware is either silver or gold in color. Choose the color that compliments the beads you have selected. Before making any final decisions, string the beads directly on the pin to see how the jewelry will look. It is difficult to amend or correct an earring once it is made, and usually requires starting over with new hardware. If you have chosen some teardrop beads, and want to hang them off the end of the piece, you will need jump rings. These are metal rings that are cut in one place. The bead can be hung directly from the ring on an eyepin, or hung from a jump ring, which then hangs on the eyepin.
Some teardrop beads will not fit on a jump ring, in which case they can be wire-wrapped onto the pin. This is a simple procedure that includes stringing the bead on the wire, passing the wire through the ring of the eyepin, and wrapping the wire around itself to create a closure. The bead store staff can demonstrate this method. The wire-wrapping technique can be used to make chain earrings, in which the beads are wire wrapped to the end of a chain, which then hangs directly from the earwire. Wire comes in many colors and thicknesses.
The final step is constructing the end of the earring and hanging it on the earwire. This requires two essential tools, wire-cutters and round-nose pliers. Using the round-nose pliers, hold the finished piece by the pin and cut the pin, leaving 0.25 inch (6.35 mm) excess. Then move the round-nose pliers to the tip of the pin, and wrap the excess pin around the curve of the round-nose pliers to create a loop. Hang this loop on the earwire, and you're done — once you've made one for the other ear.
