Wire Oval Earrings Project & Giveaway Winner

Need another earring inspiration? This one uses steel wire and a tiny spacer bead to create earrings that pack a punch!

Supplies:
8-10mm polymer clay spacer beads
50" annealed steel wire
2 gunmetal earwires
Steel wool and Renaissance Wax

Tools: 1" wooden dowel, wire cutters, round and chain nose pliers.

Prep your wire:
Run the steel wool down the length of the wire, varying the amount of polishing as your go up and down the wire with the steel wool and seal with light coat of wax. 

Directions:
1. Cut 25" of wire. Leave a 4" tail on one side of the wire and start wrapping the wire around the wooden dowel, wrap 5 times. Position the wire so the ends are on the top, and squeeze the sides of the wire to form an oval.
2. At the center of the top of the oval, wrap the smaller wire around the ovals three times to secure them. Pull the small end of the wire straight up.
3. Wrap the longer end of the wire around the small end of the wire and create two tight wraps. String on the spacer bead, trim excess wire and create a simple loop at the top of the spacer bead. Continue wrapping the long end of the wire several times under the spacer bead to fill in any gaps.
4. Open the loop at the top of the earring and slip on the earwire, close loop. 

 

Resources: Humblebeads: Tiny Peacock Spacers

 Steel wire: Ace Hardware stores. 

Earwires: Rings & Things.

Thank you to everyone who played along last week and pinned their favorite earring designs. By the power of the random.org generator the winner is Catherine Vrchota. Catherine, please email for your $30 gift certificate.

And because I so appreciate everyone else playing along last week, if you pinned 3 or more pairs of earrings email me for a special $5 gift certificate to use on your next order. 

20 Earring Inspirations

From quick and easy gifts to the bread & butter at craft shows - you can never have too many earrings or too many earring inspirations! Here are 20 fabulous designs featuring Humblebeads. 

One of the best things about using Humblebeads for earrings - they weigh next to nothing, so even bold designs can be worn all day.

Did you know most people who have sensitivity to earring wires are having a reaction to the nickel in base metal?  A simple and affordable solution are nickel-free natural brass earwires. I couldn't wear earrings for years until I discovered Vintaj's brass earwires.  People who are highly sensitive find that niobium earwires are another great choice.

Feathers & Leaves

Leaves and feathers are still quite popular, the geometric dagger shapes are on trend for summer and fall. 

Feather charms mixed with enameled headpins and glass.

Willow Headpins mixed with Czech glass, copper acorn bead caps and buri nut beads.

Frosted Leaf Charms mixed with jump rings and faceted brass beads.

Headpins make super quick earrings - you can get creative with the wire like I did in the Wire Rosebud Tutorial on my website. 

Charming Pairs

Looking for something charming? Try creating earrings with tiny charms, you can keep them simple with a little wire-wrapping or jump ring embellishments or pair them up with beads. 

Pair Falling Leaf Charms and wire for a simple design. 

 Or get fancy with the wire and create nests like I did in this pair with my Meadowlark charms.

Try creating a pair styled after my Spring Forest Earrings. 

Layer tiny charms with metal charms like I did with these Tiny Acorn charms and brass leaves that have been colored with a patina.

Sandy Shores Starfish Charms are perfectly paired up with copper wire spirals and copper rings for a surf and sun inspiration. 

Wire & Humblebeads

Wire and Humblebeads opens up a world of design possibilities. From making your own earwires to creating wire elements, get creative with wire in all different gauges and metals to see what you can create.

Use 20 gauge half-hard sterling silver wire to create your own earwires to embellish with beads. For this pair I used Willow Disk beads with a bit of sari ribbon that was ruffled unto the wire. 

A little bit of sterling silver wire and disk beads and you can create the spiral earrings in my Candy Cane Earring tutorial. 

Use wire to transform these Matchstick Charms into flower stems. Click here for the tutorial.

I love making wire nests and used steel wire with my Tiny Eggs for the cutest earrings ever!

Disk Beads & Spacers

Dangles, dangles, dangles - I pair up tiny wobbles with pewter charms and beads for some of my favorite earring designs. I love mixing brass with the pewter, they warm up the design and offer more choices for matching your earrings with other jewelry. 

Try stacking tiny spacer beads for a fun effect like I did in the Totem Earring tutorial here.

 Pair up my tiny wobble beads for a interesting little touch of color to your earring designs.

Tell a story with your bead shapes. The Willow Disk beads in this design play the part of meadow while the copper beads look like beehives and the tiny brass faceted beads like honeycombs. 

Another Willow Disk bead (can you tell I like them for earrings!) are matched up with pewter charms that have been given a patina treatment with Swellegant paint. I used a ball headpin to create a wire bail for the flowers.

Go long with a dramatic charm like these copper oak leaves paired up with Bittersweet Disk beads. The results, pure fall inspiration!

Hammered Metal and Disk Beads

Whether you are cutting your own metal pieces or using commercially offered blanks, pull out those texturing hammers and sheets and go to town making your own focals for earrings.

I pulled out some copper and a texturing hammer and paired the rectangles up with disk beads for a very artsy combination.

This layered look started with Arte Metal blanks for Vintaj and bronze dangles from Nina Designs. I textured the blanks with a ball peen hammer and paired them up with a set of my Art Nouveau Peacock Disk beads.

Pin to Win! 
Since today is July 25 I'm feeling a little Christmas in July-ish and rather gifty.  So I'm going to give away a $30 Humblebeads gift certificate this weekend.

To play:
Pin any 3 of these earring inspirations to Pinterest and leave a comment here letting me know you did. On Sunday morning I will randomly pick one comment as the winner.

Share Your Creations:
Bonus entry: Use the Inlinkz tool below to share a pair of earrings you've made using Humblebeads. (Each link will count as one bonus entry.)

An InLinkz Link-up

Earring Invasion

I have been like a little Christmas elf over here burning the midnight oil.  I'm doing a show this weekend - Hecho a Mano here in San Antonio.  I think this is my 5th year.  A portion of the sales benefit the Guadalupe Cultural Center.  I've made 85 pairs of earrings over the last week.  As you can see, I take one design and do it up in 3-6 different colors.  I work in assembly line fashion to get them done quickly.

Here are 3 new styles for this year using 20 gauge sterling silver wire, I used the entire spool that I snagged from Rings & Things!

Spirals - these are my favorites, they look like little pieces of candy.

For these ones I made a ball at the end of the wires and hammered them.

And ones that have hammered paddles on the bottom.

Tagged and bagged.  (Okay did I mention Jess watched a 1/2 a season of Warehouse 13 while I worked on these.  What a goofy show, it's like X-files meets Eureka.)

Hecho a Mano (means 'made by hand' in Spanish) is Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  I will list the earrings left over in my Etsy shop next week.  I'm looking forward to meeting people, seeing the art work and doing a little Christmas shopping myself!

Today is the last day to shop for jewelry in my shop, everything will be taken down until next Monday.