#earring tutorial

What you need:

Headpins jewellery findings. These need to be long enough to hold your beads with about a centimeter of extra wire to attach at the end. I've used different pins for this than for the necklace because the necklace ones weren't quite long enough - you can see the pins next to each other in the photo.

Earring hooks. I've used simple hooks here, but you can use whatever earring findings you prefer.

Beads of your choice. I'm using the same rainbow acrylic beads as the previous project.

Pliers with a fine, round end.

If you've already seen the necklace tutorial, you'll notice that this is a much shorter list of items than that project.

Step 1: Put the beads on the headpin, starting with the one you want at the bottom, ending with the one you want at the top. Make sure you have enough wire left over at the top to make the loop to attach to the earring hook - about a centimeter is what you should be aiming for.

Step 2: Take hold of the end of the pin with the pliers and turn the pliers so that the wire bends in a circle around the plier point. Don't close the loop completely - you want to leave a small gap between the end of the loop and the rest of the pin.

Step 3: Put the loop at the end of the earring hook through that gap and into the loop you've created on your headpin.

Step 4: Put the pliers back into the loop you created in step 2 and twist a bit more to close the gap. If you have a little bit more wire, you can keep turning this until the loop reaches the top bead, with might result in a little bit of overlap in the loop.

Step 5: You have now completed your first earring. Repeat steps 1 to 4 to complete the pair.

I checked the timestamps on my photos after making this pair of earrings and there was seven minutes between the photo of the equipment you need and the photo of the completed earrings. That was with me not in any great rush and stopping to take photos of every step of the way. If I wasn't documenting the steps for a tutorial, I could make a pair of earrings like this in under five minutes. This is what makes them such a good beginning project - you don't need a lot of equipment and you can make something that looks good very quickly. And if something goes wrong partway through while you're learning, you haven't wasted loads of time and can try again.