Starry earrings

Bones here! Long time no see! So, I thought it was about time I took back the spotlight ;)

Well what I bring before you tonight my fellow crafters are earrings I made for one of my housemates from university last Christmas.

For these you'll need:

- Earring hooks
- A length of fine chain
- Headpins
- Beads (I used a star bead, two smaller clear oval beads, and two rounded beads as you can see, but these can be anything you want to use - I'd tend to keep your 'accessory' beads (i.e. the oval ones) smaller than the 'main' bead (i.e. the star)
- A couple of what I would call 'spacers' - the silver bits below each star bead
- Jewellery pliers - I used round-nose and thin flat-nose pliers

First off, I measured the chain to each length I wanted. I decided to try and get each piece a different length so that the star bead would stay the main focus and be accentuated by the oval beads. This was fiddly, but if you can keep your patience it's worth while! You need to remeber as well that the beads will hang longer than the chain and will have a small drop from the actual ear (because of the hook!), so it's always a good idea to hold the chain up to your ear just to see how long it might end up!

When you have your 3 lengths (for one earring - 6 for both!) you'll need to start assembling your beads. On your longest piece you'll want your feature bead. Get a headpin and place one 'spacer', main bead and a round bead on it. Bend your headpin to create a hook and then place through the end link of the chain. Carefully keeping this link in your 'hook' bend the wire around your round-nose pliers to form a loop so that you have a couple of millimetres between the bottom of the loop and the top bead. Take the end of the wire around the bottom of the loop a couple of times to close this gap and cut off any excess. You should have a bead attached to the chain! Repeat this with the other beads and chains!

The next thing is to put the chains on the earring hooks. All this needs is for the end link to be separated and then placed onto the loop on the end of the earring hook. You'll want each oval bead to frame your feature bead, so put your feature bead chain on in the middle. Once you've attached these you're all done! All that's left is to wear them with pride!

Or in my case send them to someone else who will! ;)

I'll do another post soon with a pictoral step-by-step... I sent these off before I took photos! D'oh!

Anyway, enjoy and be crafty! ;)