I’m not going to lie! When I first made these earrings they challenged me. They should have been simple, but I learned some tips and tricks along the way that I will share with you. That way, hopefully when you make these earrings you won’t fall into the same traps that I did.

As garnets and rubies are one of my favourite stones, I absolutely the colour of these earrings. I think the ruby beads work really well with the silver but you could just as easily make them with gold metal beads instead. They would be equally as stunning.

Materials

It doesn’t take much to make these earrings. Here’s what I used:

Tools

Instructions

Watch the video or follow the instructions below.

String the Beads

Cut 4 pieces of tiger tail approximately 30cm (12”) long. Place the bead stopper on the end of one piece and thread on:

4x 3mm Silver Balls
12x Crystal Glass Faceted Round
4x 3mm Silver Balls

Place the bead stopper on the end and then repeat three more times.

Note: In the video I only made one earring.

Crimps and Loops

Thread on a Magical Crimp Tube (if you don’t have a magical crimping tool, just use regular crimps). Loop the tiger tail around the piece of 18 gauge wire and back down through the crimp tube. Use the 18 gauge wire to stop the loop disappearing through the crimp tube and make all your loops a similar size.

Use the Magical Crimping Tool to crimp the tube or any other method you wish. If you haven’t used crimps before you might find this video useful.

Trim the short tail to about 1cm (1/2”).

Push the beads up close to the crimp, making sure the short tail is hiding within the beads. Crimp the other end using the same technique. This time thread the tiger tail down through several of the beads and pull everything up before you squeeze the crimp.

Repeat for the other three pieces.

Prepare the Stud Post

Open a 4mm jump ring and thread on the loop of the earring stud. Close the jump ring.

Here’s a video all about jump rings if you need help.

Putting the Earring Together

The next part is where I got into trouble the first time. As I twisted and looped my pieces up, they kept jumping off the jump ring.

Hopefully these tips will help.

Open a jump ring.

Tip 1:

Hold the jump ring in the pliers close to the opening to give yourself plenty of room to add all of the components.

Thread two of the loops of the beaded components onto the jump ring.

Tip 2:

Twist the two beaded components three times towards you. If you twist them away from you they will fall off the jump ring.

Loop them back up and feed them onto the jump ring one at a time.

Still holding the jump ring at the top, thread on the jump ring of the stud.

Tip 3:

It’s almost impossible to close this jump ring correctly, so I just gave it a squeeze to get it mostly closed and then finished it off in the correct manner with two pairs of pliers.