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.
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Aqua Blue and Topaz Czech Republic glass bead earrings with silver accent.
See below for detail photos and comments for making these earrings.
These earrings use a purchased 20mm hoop.
Approximate length of earring excluding earwires: 1.25 inches
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Material list per earring:
Silver plated leverback style earwire
Silver Plated 4mm soldered closed jumpring
Sterling Silver earring hoop, 20mm round
Sterling Silver hard wire 22 gauge, 1 inch in length
Sterling Silver, short piece of chain (I used 2 links per dangle)
4mm 2-tone AB finished Czech Republic glass beads (aqua blue and crystal clear)
6mm topaz Czech Republic glass beads
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Dangle:
1.5 inch Sterling Silver ball-ended head pin
2mm x 1mm tube cut silver plated spacer bead
6mm crystal clear Swarovski® bicone crystal bead
2mm x 1mm tube cut silver plated spacer bead
10mm 2-tone AB finished Czech Republic glass beads (aqua blue and crystal clear)
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Photo on left is to show you what these hoops looked like.
To ready these hoops for the earrings I bent up the eyepin (see the top of the right hoop).
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I'm sorry this photo came out blurry, but I'm trying to show you how I assembled these earrings.
I put the 4mm and 6mm Czech Republic glass beads onto the hoop. Be careful working the 4mm beads onto these hoops so as not to splinter the 4mm
glass bead. Then I put the 4mm closed jumpring on next followed by the top link for the dangle.
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Before bending the ending eyepin loop be sure you have put the 4mm soldered closed eyepin onto the hoop next to the beads then the top link of the dangle.
I used needle nose pliers to turn the straight end of the
hoop into an eyepin end.
Left side of this photo shows the left-over piece of wire I will used further down in these instructions to make a loop.
The dangle pieces are ready to put together.
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These are the tools that I used to make these earrings.
Note the heavy duty wire cutters in the above photo. The metal of
these hoops is tough to cut. Normally I won't had cut the wire of these hoops but when I first made them I put them together wrong and needed to
cut (and hence spoil) one hoop to get the beads off.
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Here is another photo just before I turn the straight end back into a loop.
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I used my jewelry tools to bend that straight end of the hoop into an eyepin that is parallel with the wire of the hoop. This ending eyepin
(or eyeloop) captures the top link of the dangle and the 4mm jumpring. I have found the metal wire of this hoop to be hard to turn back, but
with carefully using the tools I eventually got a good closing end loop.
Next I have stuck the piece of hard wire through the original up-turned eyepin of the loop and the 4mm jumpring.
Note the top link of the dangle's chain is on the hoop between the jumpring and the eyepin. This holds the dangle centered at the top of the hoop.
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I used my needle nose pliers to carefully wrap the wire piece to make a 4mm double loop which I used to hang this earring off the earwire.
I usually do this by making a loop at one end of the wire piece, move the hoop earring to be within that loop, then snip the wire off the open wire end
followed by bending that open wire end so that it becomes second loop of the double loop.
You can see this double loop hanging right below the earwire.
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