These lovely delicate earrings are perfect for a Mother’s Day handmade gift and can be made up fairly quickly using a right angle weave beading technique.
Step 1
Gather your ingredients together! For this project you will need the following:
- Size 10 beading needle
- Nymo beading thread (cream, white or beige work well for this project)
- 8 x Swarovski 5mm bicone beads (Rose)
- 8 x Swarovski 3mm bicone beads (Purple)
- 46 x size 11 seed beads (Metallic purple)
- 2 x silver plated or sterling silver fish hook ear wires
- Round nose beading pliers
Step 2
Thread your needle with around 16 inches of the beading thread. Start with a 5mm rose bicone. Pick up 4 these and 4 of the size 11 seed beads alternately as per the picture below.
Once the beads are on your needle, pass them all the way down the thread, leaving just a 6 inch tail.
Step 3
Go back through all 8 beads (the 4 x 5mm bicones and the 4 x size 11 seed beads). This will pull the beads together to form a square shape.
When making the next sections, hold the square of beads together to keep the tension firm so that you can’t really see the thread.
Step 4
Make sure your needle and thread has exited out of one of the seed beads. Pick up 3 more seed beads and go back through the seed bead that your thread is coming out of (in the same direction as when you went through it) like this:
Step 5
Pull the beads together like in step 3 and go through the next 2 seed beads in this square. Your needle and thread should be exiting out of the top seed bead like this picture below. This will be your connector to the other earring component!
Step 6
Pick up 4 x 3mm purple bicones and 3 x size 11 seed beads alternately. Go back through the seed bead that you’ve exited out of (so that you’re going through in the same direction), this is your 4th seed bead to make up the square.
Step 7
Go through the bicone, seed bead, bicone and seed bead to make sure you’re exiting out of the ‘top’ seed bead as shown in this picture below. Pick up 4 x size 11 seed beads and go back through that same ‘top’ seed bead as before in the same direction.
Step 8
Pull the circle of seed beads together to form a circle (there will be 5 seed beads this time). Go back through this circle with your needle and thread to reinforce the strength of it. This little part will get used the most, so it needs reinforcing so that there’s less chance it will break!
Step 9
Go back through some of your beads to reinforce part of the earring again. Tie a knot between two of the beads anywhere you like, go back through some more beads and repeat this process. Once you’ve made a few knots, you can trim off any excess thread from the needle end and the tail. This finishes the earring component!
Step 10
Use round nose beading pliers to open the loop on one of the fish hook ear wires.
Step 11
Hook your earring component onto the ear wire and fasten the loop back up with the pliers to secure it in place.
Step 12
Repeat steps 2 to 11 for the second earring to complete this Mother’s Day earring project!
I hope you enjoyed this beading tutorial and found it easy to follow. If you have any questions about this post, please leave a comment!
marian gorey says
i found the instructions very easy to follow, really clearly laid out.