Beads and Wires

Although more complicated than the first earring project, I only have to learn two skills in this project - cutting excess length off of the headpins and eye pins, and making a loop after a pearl or crystal is threaded into the pin.

Bought this earring DIY kit from 1 Utama. Everything needed is in the pack.

It comes with a picture of how the end product should look like. The only instruction it has is on making the loop. As for the rests - the order in which the metal beads and pearls and crystals are put in, when to use headpin or T pin - I had to figure it out myself. It’s good practice though because jewelry making involves designing, estimating the materials you need, and planning the steps of your project ahead before you put your hands onto it.

So this is how my second pair of earrings look like.

I don’t know where to hang the earrings except on my laptop (with a dusty monitor), hehe. An easy project like this hasn’t given me enough practice in making loops. I need to do more to perfect the loop.

To know what headpins and eye pins are, and how to make a loop, visit how-to-make-beaded-jewelry.com. It’s a very useful site that carries almost all the basic information you need to learn about beaded jewelry.

This is my first earring project, just a simple one. Not much of jewelry making skill is required here, merely to get a taste of it.

Only a few things are needed:

• A pair of earring hooks (top right)
• Two pairs of embellishment – purple shell discs & filigree (top left)
• A pair of jump rings (just simple ‘o’-shaped rings that mostly used as connectors between findings and embellishments) (above the purple shells)
• Tools: Flat-nose plier and round-nose plier

Method:

1. Open the jump ring.
2. Put in the shell discs and filigree.
3. Close the jump ring.
4. Loosen the loop of the earring hook. Put in the jump ring with the embellishments.
5. Close back the loop. Done.

My next pair of earrings involves more skills. Find out in the next post.

Initially I thought I would sign up for a short jewelry-making course, but later decided to do some self-learning due to time and money constraint.

Is it difficult to get started when there is nobody to guide us? Ummm, not really. I did feel a bit lost at the beginning because I was pretty clueless about this whole jewelry-making thing - where should I begin? what materials do I need? Where can I buy them from? What type of project should I start with? Blah blah blah. But I started anyway.

Below was what I did in order to get myself started:

• First, read up about jewelry making. I read up a couple of blogs on jewelry making to have a basic understanding of what it’s all about. It’s important to know what tools and materials are needed, and what are basic techniques involved in this craft.

• Bought a couple of reference books. Since I’m a beginner, I looked for a book that explains the very basic information required in jewelry making, just like what I read from the blogs - tools and materials, basic techniques, PLUS some simple projects to start with.

• Bought the three most basic tools - wire cutter, flat-nose plier, and round-nose plier. These are essentially the three musketeers in jewelry making.

From left to right: Flat-nose plier, wire cutter, round-nose plier.

• Bought some embellishments (e.g. glass beads, pearl-like beads) and findings (e.g. earring wires, jump rings, pin), including a DIY kit.

Materials on the left were bought from Craft Haven @1 Utama (2nd floor); DIY earring kit bought from InQBox @1 Utama (LG floor) as well. The materials bought are considered expensive. So I have to search around for cheaper alternatives.

With these materials on my table, I was ready to start making my first piece of jewelry - a pair of earrings. All in my next post!