How to Make Easy Ear Wires

This post brought to you by Beadalon!And here we are on Day two of Spring Beadalon Break!

Let me cut to the chase:

My name is Candie Cooper….and I am absolutely obsessed with fringe (and jean jackets, but that’s a story for another day).

Have been for awhile, but lately with the fashions it’s gotten extra bad.

So, in this post I’m going to get you to come on over to the dark side and show you how to make fringed metal earrings with Beadalon Artistic Wire as well as how to make easy ear wires with their new Artistic Wire Findings Forms.

Shake it if you got it!

Let’s go!These earrings go together so fast and you can make the metal fringe as loooong as you like because we are actually using a coil of flat Artistic Wire.Materials list from Left to Right:  Beadalon Quick Links in gold and silver colors (25mm and 20mm diameter),  20g. silver plated Artistic Wire, Artistic Wire Ear Wire jig, Flat Artistic wire in gold and silver, steel bench block, file, chasing hammer, riveting hammer, Ergo jewelry making plier set, sand paper and a few beads and head pins.Let’s jump into making the fringe.  Make a loop at the end of the flat wire with round nose pliers.  Trim to the desired length.  You’ll need five pieces per earring so you can decide what colors and lengths you like.  The wire cuts easily with regular wire cutters.File the corners on the bottom for obvious reasons.Hammer time!  Hammer the wire pieces on a steel block with the chasing hammer to create dimples on the surface of the metal.  I like to hit the ends extra so it flares them a bit.This is traditionally used as a riveting hammer.  They make special hammers shaped like this for texturing too if you really get into this.

Now I want to show you how to make easy ear wires!This handy dandy Findings Forms jig from Beadalon makes DIY ear wires a breeze.  This one is especially cool because it makes long legged ear wires so you can change the ear wire to suit your design.  For this project, I just need some good ol’ fashioned French ear wires with a slightly larger loop than traditional ear wires have.Once you’ve wrapped the 20g. wire around, trim the back and pull the ear wire from the jig.Like I mentioned earlier, because of this long leg, you could also add a bead or do an easy wrapped loop closure.  Trim the front…and roll it back to create a large loop.  To add some extra strength to the ear wire, hammer the top arched part on a steel block to harden the wire.Next open up all the fringe pieces and connect them to the large Quick Link.I created a little Czech bead dangle to hang with my layered hoops.  A little color never hurt anybody!

Done and done!

Two metal color jewelry makes me HAPPY!

Now go on with your bad self!

I’ll see you tomorrow with another tutorial!