Earrings, bracelets, necklaces ... I love to make them all. Swarovski crystal beads bring sparkling colors and visual texture to my jewelry designs. Czech Republic glass beads offer rich deep colors, with individual 2-tone Czech beads often possessing unique color shading within the clear glass of the bead. For warm colors, I like to make bracelets from the natural beauty of obsidian and jasper beads.

I found these Swarovski crystal beads on eBay. Seller listed them as a new Swarovski color, Hot Chili Pepper AB.

Lower left part of photo shows how I assembled the earrings. Right hand side of photo shows earrings near finished except for my snipping off the lower chain link of the right earring dangle.

Material list:

The chain is a delicate 1.0mm Sterling Silver triple rope chain cut in one long and one short piece for each earring.

The Swarovski crystal beads are helix shaped and Hot Chili Pepper AB, two 6mm and one 8mm per earring.

Silver plated spacer beads between each Swarovski crystal bead.

One silver plated crimp loop tube for each earring.

You can also note that I slide four silver plated spacer beads onto each of the leverback earwires. I suggest if you do this that you keep a small plastic bag of the SP spacer beads in your jewelry box as it is very easy to forget these spacer beads are on the leverback earwires as you open the leverbacks to put the earrings on.

To put these earring together: to ease the two pieces of fine chain into the crimp tube I use a needle and thread on the ends of the two chains and stick the slender needle thru the crimp tube and pull the chains into the tube. This will not work on all tubes, but normally out of a handful I find two or three crimp tubes where they aren't soldered overmuch onto the round jumpring. As you are able to use your crimp tool to crimp the tube around the two thin chains, be sure one chain will be on each side of the crimp crease. Do it gently as if you crimp the tube too much you will squash and cut the thin chain.

Once I get the two crimp tubes done I put them onto the earwire as the weight of the earwire keeps the earrings from swinging about as you work on the other end. Next I put a needle thread through the long end of a chain and feed on the Swaroski crystal beads and spacer beads.

I usually do both earrings and so wind up with the beads on both long chains with needle and thread still on both of them.

The next trick is to determine exactly how much of the long chain you want to snip off. Once I decide the length I put the needle and thread through the smaller diameter SP spacer bead that I can get this 1.0mm chain through. Holding it all by the thread so the earring is upside down I put my crimp tool around the final spacer bead being careful not to crimp it until I get the spacer bead to the place where I want to cut off the extra length of the chain. Then crimp carefully. I only crimp once, do not use the second part of the crimp tool as I have cut through the 1.0mm chain when trying to use the second part of the crimp tool.

I would suggest practice a bit first on leftover pieces of chain until you determine how much hand pressure you want to use with the crimp tool. You need to crimp enough so that the final crimped bead keeps all the crystal beads from falling off the chain.

When I get the crimping finish, I hold up the earring so that it is hanging down correctly and I snip off the short second 1.0 mm chain so that it just touches the top of the highest bead. That way it looks like I have two 1.0mm chains going into the top Swarovski crystal bead.