150 Jewelry Wire & Beads Earrings Jewelry Making Project -- Page 3

Step 9:  Now we are ready to begin assembly of the earrings.  Open the larger loop on your modified figure 8 connector and add one semi-circular wire component, then the top of the chain and finally the second semi-circular wire component, then close the loop in your modified figure 8 connector. 

Step 10:  Open the top, smaller loop in your modified figure 8 connector and connect it to the loop in your ear wire finding.  Close that loop and you have completed your first 150 Jewelry Wire & Beads Earring.  Follow the same steps to complete the second earring. 

Alternative Designs: 

Our first alternative design is to eliminate your modified figure 8 connector.  For our original design of these earrings we were compelled to use the modified figure 8 connector because the loop in a commercial ear wire is too small to directly connect to the two semi-circular wire components plus the chain.  We needed a larger loop and used the modified figure 8 connector to give us that larger loop.  If we were to make our own ear wire, we could eliminate the need for the modified figure 8 connector.  In the earrings shown left and right, we made the oval ear wires shown.  Fortunately, the pattern for the Oval ear wires is identical to the pattern for the 150 Jewelry Wire & Beads earrings.  The one modification we had to make to our oval ear wire design is that we had to make a larger initial loop.  For the initial loop shown here, we used the middle step in our fine step jaw pliers to make a 3/32" loop.  You can view our instructions for making these oval ear wires here.  After completing the earrings shown here, we used our bent chain nose pliers to slightly bend the two semi-circular wire components so that they hung properly.  We did this by grasping the loop in our bent chain nose pliers and bending the wire immediately below the loop.  We bent each semi-circular wire component toward the other semi-circular wire component.  One final modification that we made in this alternative design is that we shortened the chain to 1" so that the bead would hang closer to the point were the two semi-circular wire components cross.  For those wireworkers who are comfortable making their own ear wires, we recommend this alternative design instead of our original alternative.  The oval ear wire seems so much more appropriate for these earrings.