Cluster Earrings Tutorial

Remember my product review post about goodies I received from The Bead Shop Manchester? Well here's the first of at least 2 free tutorials using the yummy Czech faceted round glass bead mix.

Crystal Cluster earrings

In addition to some of the smaller beads from the mix, you will need some headpins, jump rings and a pair of earwires. You will also need some wire cutters, round nosed pliers and chain nosed pliers (or another pair of round nosed would work too).

There are quite a few ways you could adapt this tutorial to make them longer, more cluster-y or more decorative but if you are looking to make exactly what I have then I used:

2 of the 8mm pale luster grey

2 of the 8mm dark blue

4 of the 6mm gunmetal

8 of the 4mm montana blue

8 of the 4mm gunmetal

24 ball ended headpins

4 jumprings (mine are 5mm)

1 pair of earwires

 

You will need to thread each of the beads you are going to use onto a headpin. Use the round nosed pliers to create loops above the beads and trim the excess wire. A fab tutorial for creating even sized loops on your headpins can be found here by Celia of Jencel beads. Here are the beads I used for one of the earrings with their looped headpins.

Open one jumpring, hold it with one of the pairs of pliers and thread on one small blue, a larger gunmetal, the large grey, a large gunmetal and a small blue. Close the jumpring. It should look something like this.

Open a second jumpring and hold it with one of the pairs of pliers. Add a small gunmetal, a small blue, a small gunmetal and the large blue. Next thread on the ring you just made, between the two smaller blue beads. Then thread on a small gunmetal, a small blue and a small gunmetal.

Next comes the fiddly bit! You need to add the earwire and use the second pair of pliers to close the loop.

That's one earring done. Make a second and you have a pair.

If you like longer earrings, you could keep adding more jumprings with more beads on them. They are glass though so the weight could quickly add up if you add too many beads. Another way of adding length would be to add clusters of beads to chain instead.

I hope you like this tutorial and I'd love to see what you make if you do use it. Drop by my facebook page and post them on my wall or write the link in the comments below so I can come see!

As far as tutorial use goes, you are more than welcome to sell what you make using these instructions but please do not copy this tutorial to redistribute/teach without contacting me. If you wish to share my tutorial, then thanks muchly, but please link people to this post. You have my permission to use an image for the purposes of linking to this tutorial only. For any other use, please contact me.