How To Make a Stunning Pair of Chandelier Earrings You’ll Love
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Last Updated on July 4, 2021 by Katherine
Chandelier earrings are gorgeous pieces of statement jewelry. They are put together with usually crystal beads for that extra punch of sparkle. The odd design may have opaque or pearl beads accented in them, but by in large, the more sparkly the earrings are, the better!
I like making my own earrings because you can customize pretty much every inch of them to your liking. To have a custom pair of earrings made by someone else, you are looking at dropping an insane amount of money in most cases. Still, with a few simple techniques, you can confidently create a custom set of sparkly earrings that nobody else will have.
So are you ready to get started? Read on for the tutorial!
What You Will Need:
You can customize these earrings based on your personal tastes and likes. You can make them longer by adding more beads or shorter by removing beads.
- 8 silver split rings;
- 2 silver eye pins;
- 6 silver headpins;
- 2 silver earring hooks;
- 4 octagon crystal beads (with two holes);
- 14 turquoise bicone beads; and,
- 6 smoke bicone beads.
As for tools, I recommend having the following pliers (read more about jewelry-making pliers here):
- Round nose pliers;
- Regular or needle-nose pliers; and,
- Snipping pliers.
You can get away with just round-nose and snipping pliers, but I find having another set of straight pliers can help with gripping your work while you are connecting the beads.
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Map Out Your Project
I recommend mapping out your project before starting. You can either draw a sketch or just layout your beads on the table in front of you and arrange them until they are to your liking.
Check out the picture below to see how I mapped out the bead arrangement for this project.
Eyepins and Headpins
Once you have your beads on the headpin, pull the wire at a 90 degree angle like this picture. Then you can pull the wire back over itself with your round nose pliers to make a loop, like this.
Once you have a rough idea of which beads need to be strung onto an eye pin or headpin, I recommend putting together those first.
To recreate my design exactly, you will need to make two eye pins with a turquoise bead on them and six headpins with a turquoise bead – smoke bead – turquoise bead pattern.
Making a closing loop on an eye pin seems complex, but I recommend checking out Making It Easy With Liz on YouTube for a helpful video tutorial on making perfect loops every time. You may need to practice a bit, but I promise you that perfection will come in time!
Connecting Everything
If you have larger beads, split rings make it easier to connect your pieces together! Once everything is all connected, you have a beautiful pair of chandelier earrings!!
The easiest way to connect these beads, eye pins, and headpins is to use split rings. Given the size of the crystals, the split rings make it easier to connect everything. A split ring is connected to each hole on each side of the larger hexagonal crystals.
This is where I like to use my round-nose pliers with straight pliers. It saves your hands if you can use two pliers to gently pry apart the split rings and connect everything.
Final Thoughts on Chandelier Earrings
Chandelier earrings are such fun pieces of jewelry, and I hope this tutorial has given you some inspiration and ideas to create your own unique pairs of sparkly earrings! The only caution that I do have is to consider how heavy the final earring might be, as this can sometimes lead to headaches and other problems if you are wearing them for too long. Otherwise, have fun with creating your earrings, experiment with different patterns, and connecting ideas to see what suits you best! Another quick tip if you want more connections and “branches” on the chandelier is to choose smaller beads as they will be lighter.
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Join me next time for a post about making a larger room in your house feel a bit cozier. Until then, stay crafty, my friends!!
