150 Jewelry Wire & Beads Earrings Jewelry Making Project -- Page 2

Step 1:  Using your flush cutter, cut two segments of 18 or 20 gauge soft wire, each 2 1/4" long.  It is important to use soft wire for this project because soft wire will do a better job of making the rounded shape required. 

Step 2:  Using your round nose pliers, or your fine step jaw pliers, make a loop in one end of each of the wire segments. 

Step 3:  Hold the wire by the loop at one and and pull the wire through the jaws of your nylon jaw pliers several times to straighten the wire. 

Step 4:  Position one regular metal peg and one 3/4" Super Peg in your jig as shown at left.  Place your initial loop on the regular metal peg and wrap the wire around the Super Peg as shown.  For those of you who have a Spiral Maker but don't have a 3/4" Super Peg, you can use the Spiral Maker instead of the 3/4" Super Peg, both have the same diameter.  Do this for both wire segments.

Step 5:  Remove both wire segments from the jig.  Position the wire segments so that they are superimposed, one on top of the other.  With the two wire segments superimposed, cut the excess wire from the end of both wire segments.  You have many options on where to cut.  As long as both segments are the same length, you will be fine.  For the earrings shown here, the wire was cut so that the rounded segments were just short of a semi-circle.  In the picture above-left, the wire was cut at about the position of the letter "C" in Centaur. 

Step 6:  Cut two segments of fine commercial chain 1 1/8" long.  For the earrings shown here, we used item 2607 from our Internet store. 

Step 7:  Using a head pin and 8mm crystal beads, hang a bead from one end of each of the chain segments.  The beads shown with the earrings here are item 2666, Swarovski Tanzanite, 8mm Round Crystal Beads.  In the earrings shown here, we used a very thin head pin, item 0270,  This head pin is relatively inexpensive, but because it is so thin, we were compelled to use 2mm round metal beads, item 2595, on either side of our 8mm round bead.  If you use a thin or standard sized head pin, the round metal beads won't be necessary.  The technique for hanging a bead from the chain can be found here or here. 

Step 8:  The final step in making these earrings is to make two modified figure 8 connector as described here.  Use 22 gauge half-hard wire if available.