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Chain-del-ears — Earrings

by Dwyn Tomlinson

The long dangling earring craze has some staying power — here we are a year later and the look is as hot as ever, — and the reason is: they look so great and are so much fun to wear. Here's another way to get that great look with out spending a fortune on fancy findings that are, frankly, hard to find.

Supplies

Supplies needed are:

bead
headpins
earwires
chain

Tools required are:

wire cutters
round nose pliers
chain nose pliers

Getting Started

The principle is simple. Cut two matching pieces of large link chain, and hang a bead off each link. Hang the top link from an ear wire, and there you have it.


Cut two matching lengths of chain (unless you are going for the funky, unmatched look!). About 1.5 to 2 inches is good. Chose chain with large links that you can get a head pin through with some room to spare. Full service bead shops often carry chain by the yard — but you might also have an old silver chain necklace that you can recycle! Start with the bottom bead.
To create the loop, you are are going to slide the bead onto the headpin, and bend the headpin, using your roundnose pliers, to a 90 degree angle.
Continue to bend the wire back around to itself so that it touches and forms a loop.
Now, you will need to slide the link of the chain onto the loop, and then wrap the end of the wire around the main core of the wire.
Now, grasp the headpin firmly, and keeping a lot of tension on it, wind it around itself back down to the bead. Trim off the extra wire and press the end flat with the roundnose pliers.
Continue to hang a bead off each link, working your way up the earring. However, don't get too carried away with big beads or too many beads. It is easy to make the earring too heavy to wear!
When you have a length you like, hang the chain from the last link of a pair of earwires. These earwires are actually hand made from sterling headpins. A nice sterling headpin with a fancy head makes a wonderful earring wire!
Start by bending a very tight loop with your round nose pliers
Get a nice sized loop by bending around a pencil!
Alternately, you can use commercial earwires. Open the loop by bending the wire to the side, slip on the chain and close the loop by bending back together.

There you go — simple and swingin'!

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