Homemade Earrings

I have a wonderful friend named Jennifer, and she is a really classy lady. She suggested that we have some lady time and make earrings, which I have never done before. I was really pumped, because I had only ever made friendship bracelets out of floss at summer camp, but never legit, grown-up, fashionable baubles. She brought over a fishing lure box filled with beautifully colored beads, tools, and earring parts. I made 4 pairs, and am excited to share the results with you!

Materials:
-earring hooks
-beads of various sizes, shapes, and colors
-metal spacers
-headpins (1 per earring)
-wire cutter
-nose pliers
-earring backs

1. Pick out the beads you would like to use. Thread beads in desired order onto headpin. As a note, if the bead hole is too big and falls right through the headpin, first place a small seed bead at the end. I actually had to do that on this pair, if you look closely.

2. Trim headpin with a wire cutter, until you have enough wire to fold over into a tiny loop. I left about 1/2 inch. It's better to have too much and need to trim more than not enough and have a wasted headpin.

3. Bend the excess wire over into a loop using the nose pliers. It takes serious practice to not make it look all jacked up (I'm still working on that). It's tough to not run into the bead at the top, also. Slightly squeeze the loop with the flat, inside part of the pliers to ensure it's closed securely. The loop should look like this when finished:

4. Almost done! Take the earring hook and slightly open the loop at the end with the nose pliers, enough to get your headpin loop into it. Then, squeeze the loop back shut securely. As a side note, you can add a seed bead to the actual earring hook (these ones came with a silver seed bead, and I replaced it with a translucent one by removing the ting spring and replacing it. This was the finished product!

And here are all the ones I made! I tried to do some with spacers, small ones, long ones, etc. for some variety. That's it! It was much easier than I thought, and I had a lot of fun making earrings. I hope you do too! :)