Christmas Earrings - Beginner Tutorial

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Last Updated on November 9, 2021 by Katherine

This blog post is a tutorial on how to make yourself a festive pair of Christmas earrings using jewelry wire and Christmas lights. Yes, actual Christmas lights!

This tutorial uses wire wrapping to encase a Christmas bulb into a “cage”, which will form the dangle part of your earring. The total estimated cost for one pair of earrings will cost you just over $1. Since you will probably have to buy larger packaging, expect to spend closer to $20. This earring tutorial is a perfect introduction to wire-wrapping for the absolute beginner as well.

Just for reference, this is what your Christmas Earrings will look like when done!

So let’s dive right in and make ourselves a pair of festive Christmas earrings.

What You Need:

In addition to these replacement bulbs, you will need some wire and some pliers!

Jewelry wire (I prefer this wire from Panda Hall available through Amazon).
- If you aren’t interested in a package, a single roll of jewelry making wire is fine.
Christmas Lights (Replacement bulbs, I bought mine at Wal-mart).
Earring hooks.
Round-nose pliers.
Wire snips.
Eye pins and beads (optional).

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Cut Your Wire

My rule for jewelry wire is always cut more than you think you’ll need. Start with around 15 inches for each earring.

If you’re worried about running out of wire, you can cut over 15 inches as well. It’s very easy to snip off any excess wire. It’s darn near impossible to add more length if you need it later!

Make a Loop & Twist

Use some round-nose pliers to create a loop and then twist the wire together to make the back part of the "cage"

I use the widest part of my round-nose pliers (Learn more about pliers here) to make a loop around the halfway mark on the length of wire. Then you’ll take your wire ends and twist them around each other.

The loop will rest on the front part of the light (around the largest part of it) so you can feed the wire tails through it and form a “cage” for that part of your earring. The twisted part of the wire will rise above the top part of the light so you can have a loop (or bale) to attach your earring hook on.

The twisted wire will go up and over the stem of the bulb and form your "bale" or connection before working down toward the bottom of the light.

For best results, keep your wire ends so they form a triangle as you turn them over, as that will stop any tangling. Use the Christmas light to measure how much more twisting you must do, as you’ll want the twisting to stop right near the bottom part.

Tying Up Loose Ends

After you've fed the ends through your loop, you simply wrap them around the stem of the bulb and tuck the ends in along the back of the top loop.

Finally, loop the wire around the bottom and back toward the center, feeding each wire through the main loop and out on the same side. Think of it like making an “x” pattern with your wire, with the main loop being the center of that. Pull your wire tight to cage your light bulb in, but don’t pull too hard.

Loop the wire ends through your loop, basically making an "X" pattern.

Next, wrap your wire tails around the screw of the light. Snip any excess wires and work the ends into the back of your earrings.

Now you just attach the earring hook, or you can add a little beaded eye pin attachment to add more festive flair before topping the earring off with a hook. I felt the earring was quite long enough without that part, though!

Final Thoughts on Christmas Earrings

I love wire-wrapping and adding in some Christmas lights is a perfect festive twist to making some earrings. You can experiment with different metals and colors of lights too and they make perfectly sized gifts for stockings.

With a little wire-wrapping, you too can have super cool Christmas light earrings!

I love how easy these earrings are to create; it makes it suitable if you have a few gifts to give this season as you won’t be spending days creating these items for your crew! Also, you won’t need to spend a fortune either as you can likely use one spool of wire for multiple projects and you’ll be able to find decently priced large packages of earring hooks and Christmas bulbs.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s post and if you did, I would love to hear all about it in the comments down below or share this post on your favorite social media platform using a button on the side or above or below. Also, don’t forget to pin this to Pinterest!